From Darkness to Light!

1 Peter 2:2-10, Fifth Sunday of Easter, May 7, 2023

Pneumatikos

The first verse of today's sermon text, 1 Peter 2:2, reads as follows. Listen to it as if you were hearing it for the first time.

As newborn babes, as newborns, desire the sincere, divine milk, which is pure; for by it ye shall grow unto salvation.

As simple as this verse seems on the surface, its meaning is deep and subtle. Let's look at just three points: 1) First, let's look at the original Greek words for "pure and divine milk": λογικὸς, ἄδολος, and γάλα, the English equivalents of which are reasonable, pure, and milk, respectively. The Greek word 'logikos' means 'rational' and 'spiritual'. Our English Bibles translate logikos as 'divine', which conjures up a picture of something like a mountain spirit. To preserve the meaning of the original, it should be translated as 'rational' (Luther - vernünftig). The point of the text is to study the 'Word of God' 'rationally'. This exhortation was given because there were Christians at the time who ignored reason in favor of fervent religiosity.

2) 'Adolos' refers to that which is without admixture. It is a warning against religious syncretism. For example, the idea that not only is soul salvation important, but that being materially prosperous in the world is also important is syncretism. Just because you like milk and you like wine, what kind of drink would you get if you mixed milk with wine? From this text, we can see that there were already irrational and syncretistic beliefs at the time 1 Peter was written.

3) The word "adore" means "to think fondly of and long for. It's a phrase we don't use much these days. The New King James Version of the Bible says, "long for," and the King James Version says, "seek." The English word is crave or desire, and the German word is begierig. These words are closer to crave or desire, which is a stronger meaning than longing and longing. Psalm 42:1 says, "As a deer thirsts for water, O God, as a deer thirsts for a stream, so my soul thirsts for you." Psalm 130:6 says: "My soul waits for You more than the watchman waits for the morning." The parables of the woman who searched the house by lighted lamps for the missing drachma (Luke 15:8) and the father who waited anxiously for his second son who had left the house (Luke 15:20) also point to this longing.

According to the text, the reason to hunger for God's word is to grow to salvation. Just as the body needs a balanced diet to grow, the soul needs a balanced diet of the word to grow. This means that only those who hunger for the Word in a rational and consistent manner, like seekers and practitioners, can grow to salvation. Otherwise, they will remain in a childlike state. That's why Paul once said in his letter to the Philippians, 'Always be submissive, working out your salvation with fear and trembling' (Phil. 2:12).

A living sacrifice

What it means to work out your salvation is shown in verse 3 and following. Listen to verse 5.

That ye also, as living stones, may be built up as a spiritual house, a holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices, acceptable unto God by Jesus Christ.

That "spiritual" when it says a spiritual house or a spiritual sacrifice is πνευματικὸς, an adjectival form of the Greek word pneuma. The English Bible translates it as spiritual. The same adjective 'divine' is applied to the divine milk in verse 2 and the divine sacrifice here in verse 5, but they are different words in the Greek Bible. In verse 2 it is logikos and in verse 5 it is pneumaatikos. Logikos is "rational," as mentioned earlier, and pneuma is "spiritual. Of course, logikos can also mean "spiritual. Ancient Greek speakers thought of reason and rationality and spirituality and invisible inner strength as similar phenomena. What this means is that a spiritual person is someone who is strong inside, rational, and reasonable. Modern Christians don't fully understand what the Bible means by "spiritual." We've pushed its meaning into a narrow corner. We tend to understand it as some phenomenon that is irrational or irrational, which is why our English Bible awkwardly translates pneumaatikos as "divine.

When the Bible says spiritual, it doesn't mean outwardly pious, it means experiencing God's created world at its deepest depths. Contrast that with superficiality. For example, let's say you have a guitar player who's very good at playing. He's mastered a lot of advanced techniques, but those techniques don't make him a great guitarist. It's the depth of the music that he has to penetrate through those techniques that makes him a really moving player. Because music has a surface and it has depth. It's the same with philosophy, and it's the same with life itself: it's one thing to know a lot of information about philosophy and life, but it's another thing to actually live it and live it to the fullness of your daily life. It's one thing to be good at church life and another to actually live in Christian spirituality as a person who belongs to a church community. One is staying on the surface of information and the other is going into the depths of information. The basis for saying that there are depths to our daily lives is the fact that the world and our daily lives are God's creation. Some of us see that and some of us don't.

Strange light

In this sense, for us Christians to be holy priests, offering spiritual sacrifices, means to be people who experience God in the depths of our daily lives. Verse 9 of our text explains this with the Old Testament concept of the people of God. As I explain verse 9, it will become clearer what I mean by spiritual sacrifices and being a holy priesthood.

But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may declare the beautiful virtues of him who has called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.

The marvelous light that the text is referring to is the experience of the depth of life just described. The New International Version translates it as "marvelous light," the NIV translates it as "wonderful light," and the KJV translates it as "marvelous light." It's saying that the life, or the experience of life, that Christians are given is a marvelous light because it's so true that it's like nothing else in the world. To put it in more biblical terms, it's the light of creation, and it's the cloud that Jesus Christ will ride on when he returns at the end of time.

Before the text says light, it says darkness, because if there is light, then there was darkness. Darkness is the absence of life, and light is the presence of life. When I say darkness, I don't just mean living immorally. No matter how moral and cultured a person is, they cannot escape darkness, because they have no life within them. And when I say no life, I mean they don't know God, the author of life.

People outside the church will reject the idea that a person without God is in darkness, and they'll have it backwards: they'll say that Christians are depressed, boring, and somehow hypocritical, while they enjoy life and try to live it nicely and honestly. That's what happens to Korean Christians, but that's not the essence of Christian spirituality, so that criticism is not accurate. In any case, it's hard to convince people outside the church that the world without God is darkness, because you can't feel darkness as darkness unless you're in God's wonderful light, just as the words "He who wields the sword will perish by the sword" fall on deaf ears for those who have fallen into war games.

Let me give you just three examples of what it means to come out of the darkness and into God's wonderful light that we can experience in our daily lives: 1) On February 14, 1990, when Voyager 1 turned its camera toward Earth, the Earth appeared as a tiny dot in a photograph. The distance from Earth was 6.1 billion kilometers. Carl Sagan titled the photograph "The Pale Blue Dot". When you realize how small Earth is in the universe, you also realize, paradoxically, how precious it is. This experience is also a kind of light. 2) There was once a man who was earning a high salary and living a busy life. His head was full of work and family and travel and hobbies. One day, as he was rushing into his office, a dandelion blooming in the small garden attached to his building caught his eye. In that moment, it dawned on him that the world wasn't just about what he was doing, but that the dandelion was also important, and that the dandelion's work could be more important than the work that was related to his salary. The dandelion became a light to him. 3) There is a traditional Japanese literary genre called "haiku". Among the haiku by Kanno Tadatomo is the following line. "Even this charcoal was once a twig topped with white snow." I don't mean to imply that the source of all that exists is always experienced as light to us, but that if we deepen these experiences in our daily lives, our souls will always be alive and moving.

Among the Old Testament characters who experienced the "wonderful light of God" were Abraham and Moses. 1) In Genesis 15:1, Abraham hears the word of the Lord in a vision: "Abram, do not be afraid; I am your shield and your very great reward." At the time, Abraham was in the midst of extreme fear: He was a displaced person, old and childless, and uncertain about his future.

Genesis 15:12 reiterates that after preparing the burnt offering of a heifer, a goat, a ram, and a mountain dove, Abraham fell into a deep sleep, and great darkness and fear came upon him. In verse 17, as the sun was setting and it was getting dark, a smoking brazier was seen and a "burning torch" was seen passing among the burnt offerings. Abraham experienced God as a light in the midst of darkness. 2) Exodus 3 is the story of Moses' calling. Moses has been living in the wilderness of Midian as a taskmaster to Jethro the priest for 40 years - a time of darkness in his life. One day he encountered the messenger of the Lord on Mount Horeb during the phenomenon of the quaking tree, which caught fire but did not burn. This was the moment when a light began to shine in his otherwise dull life.

The light of the gospel

The most definitive "marvelous light of God" that 1 Peter points to is the experience of Jesus Christ. It is through Jesus Christ that God has brought us out of a life of darkness and into a life of light. It is through Jesus Christ that we have been saved, that is, freed from sin and death. We've been freed from the compulsion and the temptation to try to fulfill our own life on our own. It's not our righteousness that makes us righteous, it's the righteousness of Jesus Christ that makes us righteous. That's why the last verse of our text, verse 10, says, "Now you have obtained compassion." If you don't experience Jesus Christ as light, the word compassion seems far away. What about you? Why don't we feel the compassion of God? Why do we miss the fact that life is a gift given by God's mercy? Why do we fail to take Jesus' words to heart practically, to not worry about what we will eat or drink or wear, but to seek the kingdom of God and his righteousness? More fundamentally, why do we fail to grow to salvation, as verse 2 of our text says?

The one-word answer is that we don't have "repentance" (metanoia). I know some of you think that's a pretty obvious answer, because the church tells us to repent all the time, but the repentance Jesus is talking about here is changing the direction of our lives. Changing the direction of our lives is easier said than done; there has to be a revolutionary change. I know I'm still not fully converted in that true sense, so I'm always praying for God to have pity on me. In relation to verse 9 of our text, which talks about calling people out of darkness and into the light, I think there are two ways of life that need to be converted.

The first is conversion from Baal worship. The reason why Baalism is darkness is because it's an attitude of life that, to use a crude phrase, stirs up survival anxiety, and it's really hard to get out of that anxiety. When we look at how capitalism, the modern version of Baalism, enslaves our lives today, we understand why the Old Testament prophets identified the greatest sin as Baal worship. It's really hard for us as individuals to deal with the zeitgeist of Baal worship, but we have to be converted from it if our souls are to experience the wonderful light of life. A country that ensures its survival so that individuals are not disturbed by such issues would be a good country, and ours seems to be in the middle of nowhere.

The second is conversion from legalism. Legalism is antithetical to the gospel of Jesus Christ. The law itself is good, so it's not simple to recognize how it is distinct from the gospel. That's why the Pharisees and scribes, who perceived the law as the way to salvation, were bound to misunderstand Jesus Christ. You can see how legalistic the church is today: the building of church buildings, the revitalization of church organizations, the discipleship and missions and evangelism strategies are all legalistic paradigms in the grand scheme of things. It's a kind of meritocracy, a desire for self-salvation, and that kind of meritocratic faith, whether it succeeds or fails, makes our souls sick. We either burn out or we fall into hypocrisy, and that's darkness. How can we come out into the light of the gospel if we're hanging on to it?

Dear saints, is your life full of light right now? Is your freedom, joy, peace, and love growing more and more abundant? Or does your life feel dark because you lack all the happy conditions the world says it should have? If so, go back to the beginning of your faith and start anew. Start anew by making it your spiritual mantra that God has called you and me out of darkness and into His marvelous light. Yes, Christians are people who make new beginnings in order to grow to salvation until death.