[sunday meditations]

1 PETER 1.13

Therefore, preparing your minds for action, and being sober-minded, set your hope fully on the grace that will be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ.

All that St. Peter has written up to this point isn’t profitable merely for those whose interests are stirred in Christian eschatology. Peter isn’t writing to instruct but to remind, and he is writing to remind the Asian Christians so that they can live within the scope and framework of the Christian hope. The first step, obviously, is an act of the mind: putting the Christian hope at the forefront of one’s thinking. This is, essentially, what Peter says here. Using the connective, transitional word “therefore,” Peter is linking what he says here to all that has come before, and he is pointing back to verses 3-12 and demanding that the Christians fully set their hopes on future grace. This “future grace” isn’t so much a technical term as a blanket-term: future grace envelops all of Christian eschatology involving God’s people. The grace that Christians are to experience is precisely resurrection from the dead, glorification, and inheriting a new heavens and new earth—all which will happen at the revelation of King Jesus.

Depending on your translation, this verse reads several different ways. Some translations render all the Greek verbs here as imperatives (i.e. commands); however, the only imperative in the Greek text is, as the E.S.V. recognizes, the command to hope. That is what Peter demands that the Christians do. Preparing the mind for action and being sober-minded aren’t commands but descriptions of what this kind of hope looks like. It’s a description of how a Christian is to hope in future grace, and the two hinges upon which this hope swings are girding up the loins (the Greek is preserved in older translations; in more modern translations, such as we find here, the Greek phrase is rendered as “preparing the mind for action” or something along those lines) and being sober-minded. Both of these descriptors of hope shine the light towards what the Christian hope looks like in practice.

The Greek phrase about girding loins is lost on us 21^st-Century westerners. The language drew forth in its original hearers an image of men in long robes running full-speed ahead. Because the long robes would cause runners to trip, men would tuck their robes into their belts so that they could move faster without stumbling about (they would “gird” their loins). This phrase works on two levels. On one level, it speaks directly to the Christian duty of moving forward, advancing God’s kingdom, running the race set before us. Athletic imagery is common in the New Testament (since sports were as much a big deal, if not more-so, to ancient Greeks and Romans as they are to us today), and this phrase, while not explicitly athletic in nature, would echo such ideas. On another level, the language echoes the Passover narrative in Exodus 12. During the night of God’s final plague on Egypt, the Israelites smeared their doors with lambs’ blood. Once they were redeemed by the blood (the Passover story is where this language originates, and Peter will return to this in 1 Peter 1.19), the Israelites were ready to follow their God into the wilderness till he brought them to their inheritance (a familiar word: see 1.4). The inheritance was the Promised Land, the Land of Canaan, a land characterized by abundant food and resources (overflowing with milk & honey), and the Israelites needed to be dressed and ready to move.

It’s easy to miss out on the biblical echoes, and the echo of Passover is difficult to ascertain on first glance. However, when it is understood, the text comes alive: Christians, who have similarly been washed by the blood of the lamb (1.19), are to gird their loins just as the ancient Israelites did, so that they’ll be ready to launch into their inheritance, the new heavens and new earth (1.4). The universe is caught in tension between Easter and Consummation, between Egypt (enslavement) and the Promised Land (ultimate freedom). Christian hoping isn’t just sitting back and waiting for things to happen; it has about it the nature of preparedness, of anticipation, of longing and yearning, of being ready to go at a moment’s notice. It is an energized, purposeful, and active hoping.

Peter describes Christian hoping as a hope marked with a sober mind. Being sober-minded doesn’t refer to abstaining from alcohol; rather, it’s a metaphor, drawing upon alcoholic intoxication. When a person becomes drunk, his or her senses and perceptions are distorted, blurred, thrown off-kilter. Self-control becomes a laughable concept. In opposition to this, Christian hoping is to be marked by diligence, self-control, keeping the senses sharp and the perception even sharper. It may sound easy to do, but it’s quite easy to drift away into a dream-like state, not dissimilar from intoxication, where we focus on pleasure, career, and selfish pursuits over against God’s kingdom. It’s easy to cling to these things as if they were drugs, and to drink of them so deeply that our senses are dulled and our perceptions blunted. It isn’t difficult to lose focus. Christian hoping, however, must be focused; and it’s to be so focused that it’s marked by diligence and self-control in both thought and behavior: such a person monitors not just his or her actions but also his or her thoughts, worldviews, and perceptions. This focused hope leads to a focused life; such diligence of the mind results in a life that is markedly different from those manners of living which characterize life informed and consumed by the present evil age.