I Peter 1:13 says, “Wherefore gird up the loins of your mind, be sober, and hope to the end for the grace that is to be brought unto you at the revelation of Jesus Christ.”
Many think salvation is just about heaven and it doesn’t affect life now. However, our salvation should affect us tremendously. Our topic at hand is living by the grace of God. There are multiple ways from I Peter that we could explore this concept. The word grace is found ten times in I Peter. But it is I Peter 1:13 that I want to dive into.
Peter begins his exhortations in this letter with an important word: “Wherefore.” The key question I want to pose to you is: considering your beautiful inheritance in Christ, what ought you to do? The answer: set your hope fully on the future grace brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ. A full revelation of Christ is coming, on the day of his return. Place your hope in the future grace of that day, because our current days may be filled with trial and sorrow. But how are you to do so? Peter specifies two ways: preparing your minds for action and being sober-minded.
Prepare Your Minds
The phrase “gird up the loins of your mind” means “prepare your minds for action.” It’s a reference to the practice of preparing for battle. The ancients wore long robes, which would hamper their ability to fight. Before going into battle, they bound them up around their waists to allow for freedom of motion. Peter indicates to his hearers that having a rightly placed hope requires more than good intentions. They must be ready to fight. The battle for holiness requires that they prepare themselves as a soldier prepares for war, letting nothing encumber their ability to fight.
The believer’s mind must be readied for war because that is where this battle begins. When we strive to live holy lives, we often begin by attempting to limit sinful behaviors. But Peter points us to the source of our sin: our thoughts. Every sinful action we engage in is the result of a sinful thought that fed a sinful desire. If we want to set our hope fully on grace, we must deal with our sin at the source.
Temptation presents itself to the mind as a reasonable choice. We allow our thoughts to dwell on its reasonableness, fueling our desires. (James 1:15). We see the progression from thought to desire to action all the time. I used to love milkshakes. But my diabetes diagnosis has changed that desire for me. As I began to understand the way milkshakes affect me, I realized that would be the beginning of the end of my love affair with them. It turns out that milkshakes were killing me. Once my thinking about milkshakes was affected, my desire to have one began to diminish, and my menu choices began to change. So it is with sins.
Understanding sins consequences helps break our desire to give in, resulting in a turning away from what once tempted us. Once we know sin is a killer, it doesn’t look as sweet. Right thinking informs right desires, which lead to right actions. But thinking rightly will be a battle. We must be prepared to fight.
Be Sober-Minded
Setting our hope fully on Christ requires a second type of mental preparedness: sober-mindedness. The opposite of soberness is drunkenness. Think about what a drunk person is like. His perception is skewed so he can’t think clearly, nor can he govern his desires or actions. By contrast, Peter urges his hearers to be self-controlled and single-minded as they live out their salvation.
The phrase "hope to the end” means “fully hope.” It’s interesting that Peter includes the word “fully” at all. Why “set our hope fully on grace”? Because it’s possible, and indeed common, for the believer to live with a hope placed partially on grace and partially elsewhere. We’re prone to placing our hope on our own good deeds, or on a spouse or our children, or on a pastor or president. We may place it on a bank account or a career. We tell ourselves that we hope in Christ, but what we mean is that we hope in Christ and __________.
We’re people of divided allegiances, divided hopes. We hedge our bets. We’re the double-minded man of James 1:6–8, tossed about by waves of doubt. We’re those Jesus warned about, storing up treasures both on earth and in heaven. Peter calls us instead to hope fully on grace, ready to battle doubt and temptation, soberly weighing the cost of divided loyalties. Those who place their hope fully on grace forgo the vain pleasures of this world and treasure a future inheritance in Christ rather than seeking one in the present. Peter’s original audience was facing the loss of social, financial, and familial stability as a result of their conversion. Their current situation left little room for hope by human standards. To them, Peter’s call to a full hope in a future security would have been a mercy.
It is for us in 2020 as well. We also face uncertainty and loss in this life. But we don’t place our hope in this life. Rather, we place it fully on the future grace that awaits us.