What is the key to living the Christian life? What sustains us in our suffering? How do we overcome accusations from the devil, the conscience, and world? It isn’t based on what we do, but in remembering and applying who Christ is to us, and who we are in Him. In this section of the Apostle Peter’s letter, he is reminding these suffering saints these truths to encourage and sustain them in a world hostile to Christ and His people.

What is the goal of being a Christian? What motivates us to continue on in this life of warfare? The Apostle Peter provides both answers in the opening of chapter two of his letter. In identifying the goal and motivation of the truly born again individual, he unfolds for us the wonderful privileges of conforming to and knowing Christ – the sum of the Christian’s life and experience.

In this sermon we identify three actions and two attitudes that born again believers strive to eliminate. Individuals who have been born again by God’s Spirit through His Word live radically different from the world. Their conduct is not merely moral, but holy. The means of living out this life of holiness is the same means one becomes a Christian – the Word of God. And any spiritual growth begins with desire for the Word.

1 Peter 1:22-25 – Having purified your souls by your obedience to the truth for a sincere brotherly love, love one another earnestly from a pure heart, since you have been born again, not of perishable seed but of imperishable, through the living and abiding word of God; for “All flesh is like grass     and all its glory like the flower of grass. The grass withers,     and the flower…