1 Peter 1:18 Commentary and Bible Study

This first epistle of Peter is so condensed, so compressed. There is so much reasoning in it, so many tightly packed arguments. You have been redeemed, purchased from disaster as somebody may be bought out of slavery, or bought out of being a prisoner of war in ancient times. A tremendous price has been paid for us – is that not an incentive to holiness? This is a distinct argument for holiness and it is based on the eminence of the one we serve. It wasn't a prime minister, a head of state, an emperor, a noble person, a great achiever. None of them could have redeemed me; they are fallen and sinful people. It was the eternal second person of the Godhead, Christ Jesus the Lord. No less a person than the Creator of the world, the Creator of me and you, the Lord of glory. He gave himself for me, a worm, and for you. ‘Forasmuch [because] ye know that you were not redeemed [saved, paid for] by corruptible things.’ We are redeemed also from futile behaviour, ‘from your vain conversation’. It was the life of sin, the life dedicated to the world, the life seeking to find all my happiness and fulfilment in things I can see and possess and have and do. It earns nothing eternally for me. In fact, it just grips me more and more and feeds my lusts and whims while on earth. I was purchased from this futile, meaningless behaviour. But how did I get into this behaviour? Peter even touches on this – ‘received by tradition’. Why was I a worldling? Why was I once heedless of spiritual things? Did I reason my way into it? No, says Peter. It was a tradition. The society I was in just passed it to me and I quite happily received it. I never considered, well, what is the ultimate purpose of life. Is there nothing deeper than this? Should I be doing something more worthwhile? Is there a Creator? Should I be honouring him? No, the society I was in brainwashed me into this worldly, selfish, materialistic lifestyle. There was no intelligence in it; it was like a tradition passed onto me, in fact, imposed upon me. If you are a Jew, your teachers had gone completely off the track of the Scriptures, and told you that you were fine with God just by your ritual and by your observance of the ceremonial law. How sad, how futile, but you have been purchased from that brainwashing, that mindless lifestyle. And if you were a Gentile your tradition, your environment and society brainwashed you into accepting idols and, again, you didn’t think about it. Mind you, you are a willing recipient of it; you are a willing sinner but how mindless is society.He calls silver and gold corruptible, even though, from our perspective, they are among the least corruptible things to be found in this world, being very unreactive metals. But since all that is part of the physical creation including silver and gold is going to be destroyed and recreated, then even these things are corruptible from the perspective of eternity. If these things which man sets the highest value on are incapable of redeeming us, then how can anything else do it?