Therefore, rid yourselves of all malice and all deceit, hypocrisy, envy, and slander of every kind.
Today we finish what we started yesterday; the first verse of the second chapter. What are we dealing with here? What is Peter asking us to do? What are malice, deceit, hypocrisy, envy, and slander? Is there something that they all have in common?
Malice is the desire to do evil. Okay. We can probably agree that we should avoid that. We can also agree that malice is ungodly.
As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Now remain in my love.
How has the Father loved Jesus? After all, it was the Father who arranged for Jesus to be born a human. It was the Father who sent his son as an emissary to an ungrateful nation. It was the Father who told Jesus he needed to die on the cross. Is that love?
Well… yes. It is the deepest kind of love.
We believe that God and Jesus are one. In some sense, God Himself came down and became part of His creation. That I do not fully understand how this is possible is not important. What is important is that God sees His creation for what it is: Broken and needing redemption.
Some cities have laws that regulate who owns garbage and when. For example, when the garbage goes into the bin, the garbage company technically owns it. Whatever you put in there no longer belongs to you. In a sense that is what happened to humanity. We collectively jumped into the garbage bin of sin and ownership was transferred to “Satan’s Garbage Collection Service.” (Motto – “When we burn trash it burns forever!”) To reclaim His creation from the garbage, God had to pay a terrible price. He had to die on the cross.
How did the Father love Jesus? He resurrected him from the dead. How does Jesus love us? He does the same thing his Father did for him: He resurrects us from the dead. What a wonderful love! What a wonderful place to remain.
