Here is a little meditation on Peter’s first letter, and the type of sight required to write it:
I Peter’s message–In light of what God already did in terms of salvation, and in light of what He is preparing for us in heaven, live holy through the Life of the Holy Spirit, who is the agent who makes us holy.
The Holy Spirit is the one who brings Christ-likeness into our beings in a practical living way. It is not our spiritual practice or disciplines, but it is by His Spirit’s Life within us that we are being made holy as He is Holy. He is the agent of true godliness. That is one of the tasks of the Spirit-to bring more of the actual Character of Christ into us.
We are convicted of sin, because The Spirit is Holy and we are not. So when The Holy Spirit enters an area of our lives, firstly we feel conviction. Jesus said the Spirit would convict the world of their sins. This is the beginning of a life of holiness. This realization that we cannot make ourselves holy, or even offer our own version of holiness to God-this is the mistake of religion as it eats from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, but cannot surrender into the being of the Tree of Life. We experience this over and again in each new area of land within ourselves that The Spirit enters. This is the sanctification process which is our life in Him.
Peter, in this epistle, is using a sweeping vision of spiritual history as a motivation for us to live holy lives. He is saying, look, the prophets foresaw this salvation which you have now received; then Peter looks towards the next salvation at the end of days; surely in light of this already-salvation and the one to come, we should live as chosen, exiles, here on earth. Be holy as He is Holy. There is only one way to live holy-by His Holy Spirit. That is the method of good living.
To allow the Holy spirit to form His Life in us. That is the journey towards wholeness. And the active agent is His Holy Spirit sent as a gift for each of us to comfort, instruct, give self understanding, form His Character and empower our ministry of Christ to others.
In a sense, our callings are secondary to our formation. For we must be “in Him” to do things for Him. The more we ARE in Him, the more of His Authority we will have to do things “in His Name”. What we are, comes before what we do. The more we are in Him, the more we will do what He is doing. That’s true authority.
To know your calling it is necessary to allow Him to form your true identity; you will then be shown what it is you are to do for Him. Identity precedes calling, and calling flows out from your true identity. Each of us is made for specific good works prepared beforehand for us to walk in (Eph 2:13). We must be filled with His Life to find these particular good works.
The more we are in Him, the more we will see life through His Eyes. Our perception itself becomes inhabited by The Holy Spirit. This is one area of the temple we are becoming-the place for God to dwell. The new covenant was about Jesus entering us directly through His Spirit and writing His Ways on our hearts. This includes His Ways of seeing. He wants to live through our imaginations. That we would all become Seers in Christ. Seeing more as and what He sees. To the Pure all things appear Pure. For we have His Sight to see clearly.
Peter saw far into the past, and far into the future, when He wrote this little letter. His perception was clear and it brought hope of what God had already done, and what He would do in the future. Our present lives are couched in this spiritual continuum which Peter saw and relayed to us through scripture. A vision of the spiritual continuum of history enters us through a cleansed perception. The Spirit peers out through us and interprets the past, present and future. We become watchtowers, and He watches through us in all directions. Wheels upon wheels filled with eyes. He sees in every direction, into and through every dimension of Reality.
In His Eyes, He sees that, already the day is dawning and His morning star can be seen rising within us. Through the Eyes of the truly enlightened heart, man has hope from a true vision or perception of what is to come, and what has already occurred. He does not want us to be blind to His world. For, we are the ones with Eyes to see! Peter, who was the first the stand up after Pentecost in the power of The Holy Spirit and speak, is offering us a vision of how we should live in view of the spiritual continuum and narrative of which we are a part. In light of this view, live accordingly, might be the shortest summation of this wonderful little letter.