Well, I want to read 1 Peter 4:3; and if I could title this verse, I would title it, "Just Let The Past Be The Past." Listen to these words:
For the time that is past suffices for doing what the Gentiles want to do, living in sensuality, passions, drunkenness, orgies, drinking parties, and lawless idolatry.
I think the way Peter talks about who we are and where we are in God's plan is incredibly helpful here. When Peter talks about living like the Gentiles, that's his way of talking about unbelievers, living as an unbeliever. And he said, "That is something that should remain in your past, let the past be the past."
His call is to live in the present and think about this, if you are God's child, here's what's happened to you; you have been transported from the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of light. You have been rescued from the kingdom of self to the kingdom of God; you have been given the power to resist the will of man and to live for the will of God.
Now let's think about this for the moment. All of that, that amazing work, is the incredible miracle of redeeming grace. God has literally set this plan in motion before the world was began. God literally harnessed the forces of nature and controlled the events of human history so that Jesus would come, live the life that He lived, died the death that He died, rose again conquering sin and death, so that you and I, right here right now, would have this present reality in our lives, that we have been rescued from darkness, we have been rescued from selfishness, in the real sense of that word, we have been rescued from our bondage to our own will and delivered to the kingdom of life, the kingdom of God, the will of God. That is the miracle of redeeming grace!
And Peter said, "Why would you want to go back to Egypt? Why would you want to go back to slavery? Why would you want to go back to bondage? Why would that old way ever be attractive to you, when you have been given what you could have never earned, never deserved, glorious, redemptive realities that are yours right here, right now?"
Well again, living in the present means a life shaped by what God says is best, what God says is right, what God says is true, what God says is good, what God says is holy. It is so easy to give way to the temptation to have a life shaped by personal pleasure, personal comfort, personal desires; and doing that, as I said before, is analogous to the children of Israel, turning back and going back to Egypt and saying, "Pharaoh, we'd like to be slaves again because slavery is more attractive to us now than this life that we've been rescued to." If you saw anybody who has been released from slavery, saying, "I want to go back and I want to live in bondage," you would say that person has gone crazy. Living for your past is spiritual insanity. Going back to Egypt, spiritually, is spiritual craziness. Don't allow yourself to lose your gospel mind.
This past present thing is spiritual warfare. Again, you and I need rescue. I don't need just rescue from an evil world; I need rescue from me! I need rescue for a mind that actually has the power to make me think that bondage is better than the liberty that I've been given. May God help us; may He meet us by His grace!
