December 22, 2026 -Made Right and Live Right

1 PETER 2:4-5:11

Chronological Bible Readings

^{1Peter 2:16} For you are free, yet you are God’s slaves, so don’t use your freedom as an excuse to do evil. ¹⁷ Respect everyone, and love the family of believers. Fear God, and respect the king.

Love the family of believers. Even if they are not very loveable? Even when they don't act lovingly toward me? Even when they rub me the wrong way and aren't my cup of tea? Yes. Yes and Yes again.

^{1Peter 3:8} Finally, all of you should be of one mind. Sympathize with each other. Love each other as brothers and sisters. Be tenderhearted, and keep a humble attitude. ⁹ Don’t repay evil for evil. Don’t retaliate with insults when people insult you. Instead, pay them back with a blessing. That is what God has called you to do, and he will grant you his blessing.

We all fail and do things that upset others and we all experience people who upset us. It can be difficult to love others when we are hurt by them, but we have the model of how to do it. Sympathize with each other. I have found that when I try to think about the other person situation, what they have lived through or are experiencing now I am able to sympathize with them. I try to give the benefit of the doubt that as a brother or sister in Christ they do not want to hurt me any more than I want to hurt someone else when I do. It helps me to show them love.

Be tenderhearted. I think to sympathize you need to be tender hearted. The opposite of hard hearted where you will not consider anything or anyone else. Tender hearted means that your heart is soft and forgiving and willing to see others situations through their eyes. I means being willing to consider the concerns of others over your own. In other words be humble.

Keep a humble attitude. The summary is put the concerns and feeling of others above your own.

1Peter 5:1 And now, a word to you who are elders in the churches. I, too, am an elder and a witness to the sufferings of Christ. And I, too, will share in his glory when he is revealed to the whole world. As a fellow elder, I appeal to you: ² Care for the flock that God has entrusted to you. Watch over it willingly, not grudgingly—not for what you will get out of it, but because you are eager to serve God.

If you are a leader in the church, you are called to a higher standard of loving the family of believers. Those who are part of your flock have been entrusted to you by God Himself, and you need to love them in a way that also sets an example as well as cares for them. It is easier to love those that you are not feeling love for if you are doing it to serve God. Remembering that He has set you free from your sin. He made it possible for you to be reconciled to the Father.

The church I went to this morning the pastor talked about 2 Corinthians 5:1-21 (and others) for an hour. To be reconciled means to be made right. We can't think about salvation without thinking of being made right. We can't make ourselves right and we are not forced to be right we are made right. Jesus reconciled us to Himself because we could not reconcile ourselves to Him. And because of that we are to be encouraging others to receive that same reconciliation from Christ. At the same time, we should be living to be reconciled to one another. When someone has wronged us and we choose to be reconciled with them even when they don't seek it, we are being Christ-like. Because we have been made right in Christ, we should live right among each other, and the world will see Christ in us.

2Corinthians ^5:18 And all of this is a gift from God, who brought us back to himself through Christ. And God has given us this task of reconciling people to him.