Good evening, Providence family, friends, many faces out here that I know, and it is a privilege to be able to come and to share with you tonight my primary text for consideration. If you have a copy of the scripture, I would encourage you to turn to 1 Peter 1. I'm also going to be referencing some other texts, namely from 1 John, But I know that over the course of the past couple nights that you have been fed well, that God has been gracious to you from faithful brothers, sharing God's Word with the intention of encouraging those who truly belong to Christ, and likewise cautioning those whose faith might be a facade. The both have to come. We have to hear the good and the pleasant and the encouraging alongside that, which might be more difficult for us to digest. By God's grace tonight, I pray that we continue this trend as we look into the text and seek to see the face of our Savior, manward evidences of our salvation, namely a love for the brethren, That's the sort of command that we see throughout the text. Here in 1 Peter 1, we see the apostle having up to this point, we'll be looking at verses 22-25 in a moment, but just as a means of addressing some context in the introduction of 1 Peter, of Peter's first epistle here, We see a number of related theological truths. Peter does not come to write this letter in some sort of a vacuum. He is writing to the church in this day, and many in the church find themselves in a time of persecution, in a time of difficulty, beginning back in verse 6. And again, I encourage you to look to those texts. I won't read them directly, but we see that Peter there is making a case for endurance. that as the brothers and sisters of the church have been scattered throughout the region and are finding themselves in the midst of hardship, Peter preaches to them an abiding grace. Later on in the chapter, Peter picks up with the theme of Christian ethics. And notice he doesn't disconnect these ideas. Our endurance in Christ has everything to do with our ethical and moral approach to the world. our understanding of who Christ is and how that affects the way that we live in the world. He insists upon a particular form of conduct with which a Christian should live. And so by the time we get to the end of chapter 1, these verses tonight that we are looking into, the apostle concludes this chapter to present a picture of manward evidences of salvation by way of a love for the brethren, which all true believers ought to manifest, having been given the Holy Spirit as the seal of their redemption. So I would invite you this evening, in reverence to the reading of God's Word, to stand to your feet as we read 1 Peter 1, verses 22 through 25, our primary text for consideration this evening. The apostle writes, Since you have in obedience to the truth purified your souls for a love of the brothers without hypocrisy, fervently love one another from the heart. For you have been born again, not out of corruptible seed, but incorruptible, that is, through the living and enduring word of God, for All flesh is like grass, and all its glory like the flower of grass. The grass withers, the flower falls off, but the word of the Lord endures forever. And this is the word which was proclaimed to you as good news. Father, I ask your blessing over the reading and preaching of the word this evening. Lord, I pray that you might use the feeble and fragile capacity of man to preach and to teach, Father, that you would use it for supernatural purposes. Father, I pray that you might open hearts and minds tonight. Open the mind of the Christian father to hear these words and to rejoice in the assurance of their hearts that because they love their fellow man, because they love the brethren, that indeed they are of the seed of Christ. And Father, I pray likewise that you might challenge those who perhaps find this to be a struggle because they do not in fact belong to you. Father, I pray likewise for this church, that Lord, that you enrich it with a love and a compassion that can only flow from a heart that has a common grace granted by the Holy Spirit. And Lord, it is our prayer tonight that in all things, you would accomplish whatever you desire in this time. Lord, be with these people and show them a mercy in the midst of my preaching. May they hear a better message by the grace of your Spirit than the one that I can preach. In Jesus' name, amen. Amen. You may be seated. The scriptures are full of valuable paradoxes. Some in our culture, cynics and critics of the text, would look to the paradoxical nature of certain texts and would say that they are contradictions. But we read texts that instruct us in things like to live one must truly die to himself, or ideas like to become great, one must become the servant of all. We see these paradoxical ideas in the Scripture, and it helps us to grasp a bit of the secrets of the kingdom. I want to I call attention particularly to another text tonight that I think will help us as we walk here into Peter's instruction to the Diaspora Church as it existed in the first century. And that text is one that many of you will be familiar with from Matthew 22. We read in Matthew 22, verses 30 and following, that the Pharisees heard that Jesus had silenced the Sadducees, which would have no doubt excited the Pharisees. They gathered themselves together, and one of them, a scholar of the law, asked him a question, testing him. And we know the question, don't we? He says, Teacher, which is the great commandment in the law? And so we see that Jesus answered him and says, you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and foremost commandment. And the second is like it. You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments hung the whole law and the prophets. Now, you may be asking, where is the paradox here? Where is the seeming disagreement in the text, and how does it apply to the nature of tonight's topic? Well, Jesus says, did you notice what he said? He said, love God with the entirety of your essence. With all that you have and all that you are, love God. And the second commandment, he says, is like it. Love man. The commandment would seem to entail that we love God until we have nothing left to give. But Jesus says the second is like it, meaning that these two are inseparably connected. And that is the paradox. Jesus says, love God with everything and. If you're loving God with everything, Is there an and? Do you have anything else to give if you've given all of your love to God? That seems paradoxical to us. That seems like a contradiction of terms. Love God with everything, and then after you've exhausted all that you have, give everything you have left to man. You have nothing left, right? These ideas are so closely connected in the mind of Christ, that to love God the way we ought to means that we love man the way we ought to. Notice that. It's not love God and, it's because you love God with all that you have, now go and love your brother. It's not nonsense for Christ, though it might seem on close examination to be nonsense in our feeble minds. Loving God with our whole essence is a prerequisite to loving our neighbor rightly. We cannot love fellow man unless we have come to love God in whose image he is made, friends. And so that is the point that we are extrapolating here from Jesus' words in Matthew 22. That's the point that in many respects Peter here in 1 Peter 1 is extrapolating also. This is Peter's basic argument in the conclusion of this chapter. He says, since you love God, love one another. Christians, we have been redeemed unto love. We have been redeemed unto love for God, who has first loved us, by the way, and redeemed as a result of that to love those in whose image he has been made. Now, as we look at this text, specifically at verse 22, let's take just a moment and look at it closely, do a little bit of diagramming on this verse, okay? Some of you might use this practice in Bible study, and I think it's a good one, especially on complex verses, to sometimes cut through to the quick of actually the most basic and fundamental idea that is here. One way that I like to do this in Bible study and in preparing for teaching and for sermons is to look at a phrase or a sentence in this sense, looking at verse 22, and isolating out from it the prepositional statements. So again, look at verse 22. Since you have been, and again, I'm reading from the LSB, the Legacy Standard Bible. Since you have an obedience to the truth, purified your souls for a love of the brothers without hypocrisy, fervently love one another from the heart. So how do we isolate? What do we get when we isolate these prepositions? And they're not unimportant. We'll come back and address those in a moment. But what is the essence of what is being taught here? Peter is teaching us, again, removing those prepositional phrases, he says, since you have purified your souls, fervently love one another. Since in Christ you possess the Spirit who has brought to you new life, a new mind, a new heart, who has delivered unto you a metanoia, a changing and a turning around of your heart, now inclining your affections and your love and your attention unto God, now love your brothers. The ESV, similarly, if that's your translation, you could read it to say, having purified your souls, love one another earnestly. Again, we'll get back to those prepositional statements. They're not unimportant. But if you want to boil down the essence of what's being said here, there is a direct connection with the way that we love fellow man and the love that God has shown us in Christ. These are inextricably linked. So what is Peter saying here? Well, first of all, again, if you're a note taker, one point you may want to write down is that purification of this sort yields compassion. Purification that is wrought from God, that is delivered by his spirit, leads about a compassion for fellow man. Well, it might seem, again, that if we love God with our whole being, that we would have nothing left to give to fellow man. Friends, in God's economy, we learn that it is only by loving God with our whole being that we can truly love fellow man. It is only by loving God the way that we are called to, the way that we are enabled to in Christ, that we can then turn and love humanity the way that we ought to. Again, Jesus sees these principles as being inextricably linked together back in Matthew 22. We also see him describing this in texts like John 15, where he says, starting in verse 9, that just as the Father has loved me and I have also loved you, abide in my love. If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love just as I have kept my father's commandments and abide in his love. These things I have spoken to you so that my joy might be complete. He goes on, he says, this is my commandment, that you love one another just as I have loved you. Greater love is none than this, that one would lay down his life for his friends. He says, you are my friends if you do what I command. No longer call yourself slave, for a slave does not know what his master is doing. But I have called you friends for all things that I have heard from my Father I have made known to you." He says, you did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you that you would go and bear fruit. Friends, the fruit being described for us tonight is a fruit of manward love. If you love Christ, then you will love the brethren. Consider Paul's position. He connects this gift of the Spirit and our redemption with the love for the building up of the brethren. In Ephesians 4, starting in verse 11, the apostle writes this. He says, and he gave some to be apostles and some prophets and some evangelists and some pastors and teachers for the equipping of the saints for the work of service to the building up of the body of Christ. It is a loving thing. Ladies and gentlemen, for your pastors and for your elders to teach you and to equip you to do the work of ministry. But not just that. He says, that would be the case also, verse 13, until we attain the unity of the faith to the full knowledge of the Son of God. What is the goal of the gathering together of the church? That you would be equipped for the purpose of unity. Unity cannot be had without love. or John's sentiments in 1 John 4. I'll be spending more time in 1 John in a moment, but just to drive this point home, the apostle writes, beloved, let us love one another. For love is from God and everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. And then on the inverse, he says, the one who does not love does not know God because God is love. By this the love of God was manifest in us, that God has sent his only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through him. And this is love, not that we have loved God, but that he has loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. Beloved, if God loved us, so also we ought to love one another. You see the connection? You see that to love God is to love God's people, And I would argue not just his people within the church, though I think that's the most immediate context, but I would argue to a different extent, but similarly, we are called to have a love for humanity in general. Peter expresses the same sentiments here, that purification yields compassion. If someone has been truly reborn of God, he or she will demonstrate a tangible love for others. tangible love. It's more than this mushy kind of sentimentality. It's more than culture's definition of love. The kind of love that Christ has called us to is the same kind of love that he has shown for his elect, a love that is sacrificial, a love that points to truth, a love that is willing to suffer, a love that endures. Friends, if we find ourselves in a position of apathy, a place of lacking concern, or even of hatred toward another person, especially a fellow heir of grace in Christ. And friends, it should cause great concern for the condition of our souls. This serves as a caution for us. And let's be honest, it's easy to say that we love God whom we have not seen. It is much more difficult to actually work out that love by expressing it in those He has created, in those who sit sometimes next to us in the pew or live down the road from us or work side by side with us. Sometimes it's difficult to do that within those of your own household. But it is great hypocrisy to claim that we love God whom we have not seen, when we do not love neighbor whom we have seen. This is not just a command, friends, for those who are greatly sanctified in their walk, for those who are those super Christians. This isn't just a command for pastors or elders or deacons or, you know, those who have committed to mission work. This isn't just for those. And I would argue they need to be exemplary models of love. But friends, this is a command for every believer, for all Christians, because we bear in common a Spirit-wrought reality, that the very Spirit of God indwells us, and if He indwells us, then we have not only the command to love, but the capacity to fulfill that command. So if you lack compassion, or empathy, or concern, or love, brings as a caution to you that's evidence that you may actually lack the Spirit of God. And I tell you this not to scare you, I tell you this because I love you. I tell you this because I am concerned for the souls of those who are here. the manward evidence of our faith. In fact, I would argue all of the evidences for our assurance that have been spoken about over the course of these last couple of days, they have been given to us, yes, to bring confirmation to those who truly know Christ, but they also stand as a testimony to those who are putting on a mask and playing games. The appeal I offer is the same appeal that Peter and the other apostles offer. It is this, repent and believe the gospel so that you might be given new affections, and particularly for our context tonight, affections for fellow man. So now that we know What this text says, how can we know that we have come to this saving grace? How can we know that our faith is real and not a facade? How can we know that our repentance is sincere and not just an outward manifestation of feeling guilty for a moment? The Lord is good to give us evidence of this regenerating work. And so I turn now to looking at some of those statements that we, in diagramming the text a moment ago, kind of skipped over. Let's look back to some proofs of redemption. Proofs of redemption for you notes takers. Now the proofs or the evidence of one's salvation are shown, as I mentioned, in the prepositional phrase. We got down to the nuts and bolts of what was being said. Now let's go and look back at some of the specifics because it's in the specifics that we see where these proofs are, these evidences are found. Again, verse 22. Since you have an obedience to truth, purified your souls for love of the brothers without hypocrisy, fervently love one another from the heart. We'll begin where Peter begins, okay? Contending that saving faith is evidenced first in obedience. He says, since you have an obedience, or by your obedience, as the ESV says, which might be called holiness or righteous living, Peter's argument is one that is building on itself now for several verses. Again, in the time constraints that I have, I couldn't preach through the entire chapter. But suffice it to say that Peter's argument throughout the chapter has been a building one. It is built upon the nature of grace in the gospel and our need to continue to look to Christ, especially in times of persecution. That is the context, after all, to whom he is writing. The notion of obedience, particularly obedience unto holiness, it's already been addressed by Peter, asked and answered, so to speak. And so He here is simply contending now that obedience to God is one of the pieces of evidence demonstrating true and saving faith. So without hanging out on that topic, that's one that I know has probably already been addressed, and one good text to go here is to John chapter 10, verses 24. I don't want to hang out here for too awful long. But friends, obedience is one of the things that Peter mentions as an evidence, not only a Godward evidence, but I would argue an evidence that is horizontal as well. We obey God, and one of the ways we obey God is by loving man. So obedience to what? He tells us there again in the verse, obedience to the truth, he says. We are to be obedient to the truth, the truth that has been revealed to us from God on high. It's the truth you now hold in your hands, leather-bound before you, the very word of God. That's the truth to which we are bound, to which we are to obey and be sanctified by. Jesus, in his high priestly prayer in John 17, again, they're praying for you, Christian. He says, I have given them your word. And the world has hated them because they are not of this world, even as I am not of this world. He says, I do not ask you, Father, I do not ask you to take them out of this world, but to keep them from the evil one. They are not of the world, even as I am not of the world. Sanctify them by truth. Your word is truth. As you sent me into the world, I also send them into the world. Why has Jesus sent us into the world? Well, to express a love for God. and in doing so to show love for man. We have been set loose on the world, Christian, that we might take the love of God in Christ and lay it at the feet of those who have been made in the image of God. In the very next chapter, we just looked at John 17, and the very next chapter in John 18, as Jesus stands before Pilate continuing a treatise of truth We read these words, Jesus answered, my kingdom is not of this world. If my kingdom were of this world, my servants would be fighting so that I would not be delivered over to the Jews. But as it is, my kingdom is not of this world. Pilate says to him, so you are a king. And Jesus said, you yourself said that I am a king. For this, I have been born. And for this, I've come into the world to bear witness to the truth. Everyone who hears the truth hears my voice. Friends, our submission to the truth of God is absolutely key to evidencing our faith. And again, I know that probably piggybacking off of some of the things that have been said in recent nights, truth is absolutely, and our adherence to it is an absolute evidence of faith. So we obey God in holiness, we obey God in truth, and in all of these things, the third preposition that Peter here uses in verse 22 is a sincere love for the brethren. The LSB, the translation I use, for a love of the brothers without hypocrisy. Think about that. I like the way that's broken down, without hypocrisy. We can say it's sincere and that ultimately means without hypocrisy, but that is such an important caveat, isn't it? We can love people hypocritically, can't we? We can love people in such a way that we are loving them so we might get something in return. That's not godly love. Godly love is that which is sacrificial. Consider the Carmen Christi in Philippians 2, where Jesus describing, or Jesus being described by the apostle Paul, is described as being God of very God, but did not consider his Godness something to hold on to so tightly. So he humbled himself, becoming a man, coming in the form of a servant, coming to die, even to die on a cross. We sometimes call that text there in Philippians 2, the great parabola, the great swing of the Son of Man, who began in heaven and who swung low to earth that he might ascend back to the heights of the kingdom with his Father. A sincere love is one that is sacrificial. It's one that is demonstrated for us in Christ. The notion of brotherly love and intense compassion has been under fire in the church for many years. And particularly if I'm being honest, this notion has been recently under attack, even in reformed sections of the church. Brotherly love, ladies and gentlemen, is not some kind of novel, feminized, liberal approach that has infiltrated the body from outside sources in modern times. Friends, this is the apostolic witness. This is not some sissified Christianity. The most masculine thing, men, the most masculine things that we can do for those in the church around us is to love them and to love them sacrificially. Husbands, the most masculine thing, the most godly thing you can do for your wives and for your children is to love them. Pastors, the best thing you can do for your congregation is to love them with the Word of God. Again, it's not some feminized approach to what it means to be a Christian. This is a witness of the text, Philippians 2 again. If there's any encouragement in Christ, there's any consolation of love, if there's any fellowship of the spirit, any affection and compassion, fulfill my joy, Paul writes, that you think the same way by maintaining the same love, being united in spirit, thinking on one purpose, doing nothing from selfish ambition or vain glory, but with humility of mind regarding one another is more important than yourselves. Not looking out merely for your own interest, he concludes, but for the personal interests of others. Finally, Peter's point here at the end of verse 22 is to point out that all of these characteristics flow naturally from a regenerate heart. It is the natural outflow for the Christian to be committed to obedience. It's the natural outflow for the Christian to be committed to truth. It's the natural outflow possessing the spirit for the Christian to be committed to the fellowship of the saints, to be committed to a brotherly love. Blowing naturally from the heart or from a pure heart, not the muscle in your chest, but the very essence of who you are. That's the heart that's being spoken of. Friends, if you are truly in Christ, When you were bought with the price of Jesus Christ, and when in time and space you were called by faith to come to Him, many things happened in that moment. We sometimes call it the great exchange, right? Jesus hanging on the cross, paying my sin debt, me living a life of sin, handing my sin off to Jesus. What an exchange. What a glorious story. Double imputation, right? Christ's righteousness in exchange for my sinfulness. What a deal. As we consider that and that reality, since it is Christ who now intercedes on our behalf at the right hand of the Father, we have no excuse, no reason to not do everything that He's commanded us to do. And not only do we have no reason, we have every reason that we should do everything that he tells us to do. We've been granted with a heart and with affections and with a mind that we can obey him. Man's heart, his truest or his most essential self, means that we as Christians, at our conversion, are new creatures. The old has gone away, the new has come. And from this new nature, from this new heart, comes new affections, specifically for those who bear the Spirit, we now have a love for those who bear the image of God. Titus 3, He saved us not by works which we did in righteousness, but according to His mercy, through the washing of regeneration and renewal by the Holy Spirit, whom He poured out on us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior." Well, friends, hallelujah. What an incredible testimony that with what Christ has done, we now have the capacity to obey Him. And what has He commanded us to do? To love our neighbors. To love the brethren. Now, there are some who tell us that love can't be commanded. If it's gonna be sincere and true love, then it cannot be commanded. I'm here. I think the theological word for that is hogwash. Jesus commands us to love. He commands us to love Him. He commands us to love one another. Love can be commanded. It can be demanded of us. If God is your creator, He can demand of you whatever He wants to demand of you. It's the capacity and the imperative that we obey Christ and therefore love the brethren that can only come truly from God. I want to take just a couple of moments and encourage you to turn over with me to 1 John. 1 John. And then we will come back momentarily to 1 Peter before I wrap it up this evening. When I counsel folks in the church who are struggling with assurance, I most often will recommend that they read the book of 1 John. And so since this is a conference on that particular subject, I would commend 1 John to you. It's a fantastic book that can help us to work through some of these issues. So why 1 John? Well, John bookends this epistle with purpose statements. In chapter one, verses one through four, he tells us, He says, what was from the beginning, what we've heard, what we've seen with our eyes, what we've beheld and touched with our hands concerning the word of life and this life was manifested and we have seen and bear witness and proclaim to you the eternal life which was with the Father and was manifest to us what we have seen and heard and proclaimed to you also, so that you may have the fellowship with us. Indeed, our fellowship is with the Father and with the Son, Jesus Christ." What's he saying? He says, in light of the gospel. That's how you summarize those first three verses. In light of the gospel, He says, and these things we are writing so that your joy may be complete. All of 1 John, again, bookending it here at the very beginning by saying, in light of the gospel, here's how you find joy. I would say, here's how you find an assurance of your walk with Christ. And so the next four and a half chapters, that's what the apostle spends time doing, is helping us to know how we might have assurance of our salvation. He sets forth his intentions here that our joy might be complete in the gospel. He's not adding to the gospel. He's not equivocating the gospel with his instructions. He's saying this is the natural outworking, the natural evidences that the gospel has come to bear on you. And in the last chapter, I said he bookends it. In the very last chapter, in 1 John 5, we read, starting in verse 11, these words. He says, And the witness is this, that God gave us eternal life, and this life is in his Son. He who has the Son has the life. He who does not have the Son of God does not have that life. Verse 13, These things I have written to you who believe in the name of the Son of God, that you may know that you have eternal life. So you might find joy in it, you might find assurance, here in chapter five, that you might find joy in it, that you might find assurance, I would say. So that's his purpose. So what are the things? I would argue that John gives us three tests, three tests, and we've looked at some of them already. over the course of this, but again, just a quick rundown as I commend this book to you highly, just as an extension of this conference. In John's first letter over the course of its five chapters, he lays out three tests in various ways. First, he offers the test concerning a love for holiness. A love for holiness. A key text here is found in chapter 2, verses 4 through 6, where he says, "...the one who says, I have come to know Him, and does not keep His commandments, is a liar, and the truth is not in him. But whoever keeps my word truly in him, the love of God has been perfected. By this we know that we are in him. The one who says he abides in him ought himself to walk in the same manner as he walked." We obey God. We pursue holiness. That's test number one. Now, let me offer a caveat to these tests. You will not keep them perfectly. This is a test that you will not ace, Christian. This is a test you cannot study for. You cannot prepare for it. I suppose in some sense you can prepare for it. We stay in the word, we stay in prayer, we stay in the fellowship of the saints. That's our preparation, friends. The world is our testing ground, our proving ground. But we will not ace this. This is a test that we will not score high marks on until we arrive on the other side. But friends, praise be to God that Christ has aced it for us. That our confidence, our hope is not ultimately in our capacity to keep these rules, these laws. They are in Christ and in Him alone. The second test that he offers is a test concerning a love for truth. So, a love for holiness, a love for truth. 1 John 4, verses 1-6 help us to see these verses. Again, I'm not going to read through these, but I want to give you the reference points so that at another time you might glance at them. For tonight's consideration, as Peter has addressed, Here in 1 Peter 1, John lays out a test concerning a love for the brother, and I will read this. 1 John 3, verses 11 and following. Listen to this, and we'll hear an echo here from John that resonates from what we have already read from Peter. This is the message he writes, starting in verse 11. This is the message which you have heard from the beginning, that we should love one another, not as Cain, who was of the evil one and slew his brother. For what reason did he slay him? Because his deeds were evil and his brothers were righteous. Do not marvel, brothers, if the world hates you. We know that we have passed out of death into life because we love the brothers. And the one who does not love abides in death. Everyone who hates his brother is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life abiding in him. By this we have known love, that He lay down His life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers. But whoever has the world's goods and sees his brother in need and closes his heart against him, how does the love of God abide in him? Little children, let us not love with word or with tongue, but with deed and in truth. That's how we love. Not with mushy sentimentality, not merely with words saying, I love you, saying, go and be fed. We love by sacrifice. And friends, I pray that these characteristics are true of you. No doubt, as I mentioned earlier, we will not demonstrate them perfectly in this life. The flesh, the old man occasionally rises up and confounds the spiritual man. But as we walk in the grace of Christ, our lives ought to show a trajectory toward the character of Christ. We are being ever sanctified in this life. We're being made fit for heaven, as it were, as the Puritans would put it. And one of the ways that God is working that out is by love for one another. Obedience unto holiness, a love for truth, a compassion toward fellow image bearers, the total thrust of 1 John, and certainly the thrust we see here in 1 Peter 1. Friends, know that these are not prerequisites for salvation. A love for holiness, a love for the truth, and a love for the brethren, that is not a prerequisite for salvation. But I will say this, it is a prerequisite for heaven. If you've truly come to know Jesus Christ, then these are things that God is doing in you. Let that be what we rest in at the end of the day, that it is not by thy strength, It is not by your power or your might or your efforts in the same way that you were not able to save yourself despite perhaps every effort you could make. All of these things are wrought by God. If you truly belong to Him, then they will be things, yes, that we have to work on and things, no, that we will never do perfectly, but they will be things that are evidenced in our life. So we are called to love sincerely. We're called to love in Christ. We are called to love with truth. And we find assurance when even though we don't do it perfectly, we do it truly. Second and final point, and I'll move through this very quickly. is this, as we look to the final verses here in 1 Peter 1, we see a robust gospel, the same gospel that has called us and enabled us to love, the same gospel that I described to you earlier as a gospel That is, that we are redeemed unto love. We now see a robust gospel playing out in our lives. How do we endure persecution? How can we be made holy? How can our conduct truly honor the Lord? How can we love the brethren sincerely? These manward evidences. We can succeed at all of these things because we have a gospel. Namely, we have a Savior who transforms us. Our assurance in Christ is evidenced by our sanctification. It's not earned by it, but it is evidenced by it. Christ has purchased you, beloved, and so now we have to act like it. More than that, now we can act like it. Peter describes it in terms here in verse 23 as having a better seed. He says, for you have been born again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible. The corruptible seed, the natural man is naturally opposed to the things of God. The old nature, which is in view here, is not only corruptible, that is that it's prone to death, but it is already corrupted, is the way that it's actually written. It's already corrupted. And the spiritual things of ourselves outside of Christ are already spiritually dead. The parable of the sower, Mark 4, speaks to these things. Not to the quality of the soil as the determining factor, or nothing that the quality of the soil is the determining factor here, rather than the sowers. We should note that. Praise be to God that those who have been raised to new life with Christ that we have a soil that's been prepared by God. We're no longer subject to the futility of the old corrupt essence of Adam. We have a new Adam, a second Adam who has come as our redeemer and has called us to walk in his likeness. Secondly, in these verses, we see that we have not only a better seed, but a better source. That is through the living and enduring Word of God. The seed, the deposit of faith that God has planted in us is undergirded and is sheltered and is proven by the very Word of God. How is it that we can love the brethren? Well, because we have the Word that teaches us and instructs us to do this. Is this an area where you're struggling? If it is, go and look to a better source. How is it we love like God? Well, we look at what God has written to us and that instructs us. And friends, let me say this, the local church is a petri dish for this kind of evidence. If you want to love the brethren and grow in this and have this assurance in your life that you love people, if you're not plugged into a local church, you're robbing yourself of one of the greatest joys and opportunities to see this worked out. If you're a Christian, you need to be involved in a local church. Finally, we see an enduring salvation, and that's what we see here in verses 24 and 25. These beautiful words you can hear quoted from the prophet Isaiah in chapter 40. Peter writes, all flesh is like grass, and all its glory like the flower of grass. The grass withers. Flower falls off, but the word of the Lord endures forever. And this is the word which was proclaimed to you as good news. Friends, we are called to love people because people have an eternality about them, a future endurance about them. You've never met, as C.S. Lewis put it, you've never met a mere mortal. Every person that you meet, has a soul that will endure past this life. So as we interact with them, as we show them love or decline to show them love, as we point them to Christ or decline to point them to Christ, realize that every person that you are interacting with is a person whose soul will end up somewhere. It will either end up in the midst of the Father in heaven because they've come to believe on Jesus Christ, or they will end up in a sinner's hell prepared for Satan and his demons. Peter does this. He writes these words, again, echoing from Isaiah chapter 40, to create a contrast between the fallen flesh, whose glory is transient and temporary, and those who have placed their faith and hope in Christ. And so, my friends, tonight my prayer and hope for you is I've prepared this message and have now given it to you. My deepest longing is that as you evaluate your life, that you would find yourself to be at the deepest place of commitment to Jesus Christ, and that that works itself out by being at the deepest place of commitment to your fellow brothers and sisters in Christ. If you want to be ensured of your salvation, get plugged into a church where you're surrounded by people who love you, where you're surrounded by people who love you in spite of you. And may you learn to reciprocate that same love, to learn to love them in spite of them. Friends, we're all on a difficult journey in this life. It's a world filled with thorns and thistles, with difficulties of every type. We don't know the struggle of the man or the woman who is down the pew from us, but I can tell you this, we can walk with them in love. and direct their gaze toward Jesus Christ, whatever it is they may be enduring. I pray that is true for you. In this word, which was proclaimed to you as good news, Peter concludes, this is the good news, that Jesus Christ has died for sinners, that he hung upon a tree, and he died the death of a criminal, and that he died that death for his people. My friend, my prayer is that you have placed your faith in this Jesus, that you love him, that you understand the love he has for you, and that way it would make it impossible for you not to be loving to those around you. Let me pray for us. Heavenly Father, you have been so good to us tonight. Lord, your word is a lamp to our feet, a light to our path. It is a sharp blade that divides truth from error. Father, I pray tonight that that blade is perhaps pierced into the hearts and minds of some who are in this room, Father. That it's pierced in such a way that perhaps it brought those who are struggling or walking in difficulty in their faith right now, that maybe it has encouraged them. That Father, that as they look and they search out their own heart, they see, yes, an imperfect love, but a sincere love nonetheless for the brethren, and that that gives them hope. That gives them a confidence that they indeed belong to the lover of their soul, Jesus Christ. Father, for others, perhaps tonight it has come and it has been plunged into their hearts in such a way to help them to realize that perhaps their love that they have been showing is a It's a hypocritical love. It's a false love. It's a love that was very unlike that of Christ. Father, may you use this dividing truth from error in our hearts and minds tonight. May you use it for your glory, both for the center as well as for the saint. And I'll pray it in the name of Jesus Christ, our Savior. Amen.