The Genuine Christian
‘Now that you have purified yourselves by obeying the truth so that you have sincere love for your brothers, love one another deeply from the heart. For you have been born again, not of perishable seed, but of imperishable, through the living and enduring word of God’ 1 Peter 2:22,23.
Peter likens our believing and receiving the gospel to soil having seed planted in it. The gospel is living, enduring and imperishable, and so the seed is described as living, enduring and imperishable.
Just as the seed creates the life of a new plant so the gospel creates the life of God’s nature in us. The kind of seed determines the kind of plant. God’s seed produces God’s life.
The soil begins by receiving the seed. As we receive the gospel we are supernaturally born again.
Just as the seed grows in the soil to produce a plant, so the gospel works in us to produce a new nature. This new nature is the life of God in us. God’s seed produces God’s nature.
The soil nurtures the growing plant. We must nurture this new nature by feeding it on the milk of God’s Word (1 Peter 2:2).
In time the plant breaks the surface. In time we find ‘a sincere love for others’ growing in us. The seed of a loving God produces ‘a sincere love for others’ in us.
The plant naturally continues to grow upward and outward. As we continue to follow God by ‘obeying the truth’ we find our hearts increasingly purified.
The result is a healthy, genuine Christian who loves others ‘deeply from the heart.’
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