Today and through the next week or two, I would like us to take a look at 1 Peter 1:17-19 “And if you call on the Father, who without partiality judges according to each one’s work, conduct yourselves throughout the time of your stay here in fear; knowing that you were not redeemed with corruptible things, like silver or gold, from your aimless conduct received by tradition from your fathers, but with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot.”
Today we’ll focus on verse 17. Go back and read it again.
The first thought I had is that this verse speaks of God evaluating our works. But works are not part of the evaluation process for those who are in Christ, are they? Peter goes on to emphasize it even more by telling us to conduct ourselves with fear during our stay here.
The Bible clearly teaches that we are saved by grace and not by works. Romans 8:1 teaches us that there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. So Peter is not talking about a salvation issue here.
However, we do know that God is going to evaluate our lives and hand out awards according to the deeds we have done. “For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, that each one may receive the things done in the body, according to what he has done, whether good or bad” 2 Corinthians 5:10. Since we are redeemed by the very valuable and precious blood of Christ, we belong to God. We are not our own. We are here to serve God and not ourselves. It’s reasonable and biblical to recognize that we should be careful how we live for God during our short stay here. There should be some level of fear. This fear is not a terrorizing fear of losing our salvation. But, it is also not a superficial respect for God. Our father is God almighty who rules from heaven, and He knows not only what we do but what our motivation for doing it is. There is coming a day when we will give an account to Him as to how we used the gifts and abilities He has given us, including how we used our time and money. There should be some level of fear even as we face our Heavenly Father who we know loves us.
Let us each ask God to give us the desire to serve Him in a way that pleases Him, realizing that all the blessings of life are ours because of His generous grace.