1 Peter - Following Jesus Sample

Today Peter will show you your purpose for your life and it is good for you to know it. This is especially true on days when you may feel your life is a bit aimless, or on days when your mind is full of all sorts of goals you have made up for yourself.

Yesterday we read that Peter called these scattered, stressed Christians 'God's elect'. Peter now goes on to tell these believers more about this truth.

• What has God chosen these believers to be (v. 2)?

God’s purpose for our lives is that we should be holy people who obey Jesus Christ. ‘Sprinkled with … blood’ is picture language from the Old Testament for cleansing from sin through sacrifice. Through Jesus’ sacrificial death, believers are cleaned up spiritually and made holy, ready for God’s special purposes.

What is his purpose? God didn’t choose us just so he could put our names on some list he keeps in heaven. God chose us so that we could begin to live obeying Jesus as Lord. That is what God wants you to do today.

• What does this verse tell us about how God chose these believers?

God made a plan. Before the creation of the world, God made a plan to rescue a people to belong to him. These Christians have always been in God’s mind to be part of this plan. That is the sense of the phrase ‘according to the foreknowledge of God the Father’. It has the idea of making a plan in advance. Right back then, God decided that he wanted us in his family.

This wasn’t because of all the good things we had done: that would make us feel very insecure, especially on our bad days. In fact, we hadn’t done anything at all when God chose us; we hadn’t even been born. God's plan to choose us had always been fixed and certain. There is great comfort and security in that. 

God put his plan into action through Jesus’ death and also ‘through the sanctifying work of the Spirit’. To ‘sanctify’ means to set apart, to make holy. It is as if the Spirit had put his hand on these Christians’ heads and said, 'You are mine.' If you are a believer today, that has happened to you too. 

Pray

Ask God to help you see the wonder of all this and to obey Jesus today.