John 2:1 “On the third day a wedding took place at Cana in Galilee. Jesus mother was there, and Jesus and his disciples had also been invited to the wedding.”

Eventually, our heroes let us down. As a boy, I idolized all kinds of sports heroes. As a young man, I developed a number of political heroes. Through my life, I have respected several religious or spiritual heroes. I could give you specific examples, but it probably isn’t good for me to criticize some individual’s life in front of you.

But you know what I mean. You have experienced the same kinds of disappointments in people you respected. One man enjoys the public image of a devoted family man, a model of virtue, a great example of selflessness, faith, and wholesome values. Then the scandal breaks. His illicit affairs are exposed. His addictions hit the news. His exploitive treatment of other people becomes common knowledge.

So we become cynical. We put up our guard. We withhold our trust. Then we discover the Great Exception. He shows himself at a wedding at Cana in John 2. Yet does his behavior there make us pause and wonder?

One thing that endears Jesus to people is the way that he shares their lives. Sometimes we get a lopsided view of what that means. It is clear that, when Jesus lived here, he didn’t take any special privileges. He didn’t enjoy any unusual advantages. Until he started teaching, he earned his living by working with his own hands as a carpenter. His clothing was unremarkable. He didn’t dress in rags, but he didn’t dress like the rich, either. Some people have said that he was homeless, but we shouldn’t picture the chronically homeless who live outdoors today. He had no permanent home to claim for himself. Most often he stayed in the homes of one of the many people who followed him, or some unnamed villager in Samaria, Galilee, or Judea. He experienced hunger, pain, overwork, grief, and exhaustion.

Some get the idea that Jesus’ relatively simple life means that it is wrong for us who follow him to enjoy life or have nice things. Christians should adopt poverty and avoid fun. If we find ourselves thinking this way, it is an idea for which to repent. It mischaracterizes Christianity. It gives the Christian faith a bad name. Jesus tells us to carry our crosses when they come. And he promises they will come. But he doesn’t say we are supposed to go looking for them or make it our goal to live life as one never-ending burden. The point of Christianity is not to feel sad or miserable. Those may be unavoidable experiences from living in the broken and sinful world. Jesus felt them, too.

But look at him in John 2: not just invited, he and his disciples decided to attend the wedding. This was not the church ceremony for the bride and groom. No one would question Jesus attending one of those. This was like our wedding receptions: the feast, the dancing, the party. They even had drinking there. Jesus himself even brought a large portion of the wine. Jesus drinking? Jesus bringing the wine? How could that be? I thought that he was supposed to be a Christian!

Here he gives us a more complete picture of what it means to live like a Christian, a more balanced view of the way he shared our lives. Jesus was neither encouraging nor condoning drunkenness. But he clearly blesses the idea of enjoying ourselves with the things God gives us. He later attended parties at the home of his disciple Matthew, a Pharisee named Simon, and others who invited him over. He even developed a reputation for enjoying life this way. “John the Baptist came neither eating bread nor drinking wine, and you say, ‘He has a demon.’ The Son of Man (that’s Jesus) came eating and drinking, and you say, ‘Here is a glutton and drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners’” (Luke 7:33-34).

This is the point: Jesus shared our sadness and our joy. He experienced our heartaches and tragedies and our celebrations. He sometimes went without, but he also used and enjoyed the good things of life when they were available. Yes, he was against harmful excess, selfish hoarding, and getting out of control. But he embraced pleasure as a good gift of God, and he encourages us to do the same. There is no virtue in being a sour-faced Christian.

Sometimes people say they want their pastor or Christian leader to be “relatable,” someone who understands them and gets their lives. Jesus was relatable, because he shared the whole spectrum of our lives. We need not question him for enjoying good things when he could. We can enjoy them, too.

Luke 3:22 “A voice come from heaven: ‘You are my Son, whom I love; with you I am well pleased.’”

None of this was news to Jesus. It is not as though he doubted any of it. We see him as the 12 year-old boy in the Temple telling Mary and Joseph he had to be in his Father’s house. He knew he was God’s Son, and that in a special way.

Jesus understood that God loves him. Was God’s love not the special emphasis of all his preaching and teaching? He didn’t come to give great advice, or new rules. “The law came through Moses,” John writes in introducing Jesus to us. “Grace (that’s God’s undeserved love) and truth came through Jesus Christ.” Think of the Parable of the Prodigal Son. Think of the way he dealt with the woman caught in adultery. “As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you,” he told the disciples in the upper room hours before his death. The most famous passage in the Bible, “God so loved the world, that he gave his one and only Son,” is Jesus talking about love. God’s love for him, or for us for that matter, was not a new revelation for him.

Jesus understood his whole life and work pleased his Father. “The reason my Father loves me is that I lay down my life,” he said when he described himself as the Good Shepherd.

Jesus knew all this. But he came to be baptized and to hear it anyway. He came to hear his Father claim him as his own. Is that hard to understand? Don’t we all want someone who claims us? When we are children, don’t we want a mom or dad who will proudly say, “That’s my boy!” or “That’s my girl!” when we are running around on the soccer field, or acting in the school play?

When we find a love interest, and we start to meet their friends or family, doesn’t it make your heart swell when they can’t wait to show you off to the next person, and they are quick to claim, “This is my boyfriend,” or “This is my girlfriend” and later “This is my husband” or “This is my wife”? Wouldn’t it be disappointing, even heartbreaking, if they were trying hide the fact, or seemed embarrassed to be associated with you?

For someone to say, not just to us, but for everyone else to hear, “You are mine. I love you. You make me happy in every way” may be the highest compliment, the ultimate expression of affection, the greatest thing we can hear from someone who cares about us, and someone we care about in return.

That’s what Jesus was getting from his Father when he was baptized. He was claimed by God. Now here’s the reason you should care: that is what you are getting from the Father at Jesus’ baptism and your own. Remember, Jesus is your substitute in life and in death. By faith God has made you a little Christ. If he says this about Jesus, it applies to you as well. Hear him say it now, “You are my son, or daughter, whom I love. With you I am well pleased.”

And at your own baptism, your heavenly Father was laying his own claim on you. In those waters he put his name on you, “in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.” He was saying, “You belong to me now. I have called you by name. You are mine.” Maybe that’s not news to you. I hope it’s not news. But for these few moments, I hope that you can simply bask in the comfort of knowing you are claimed by God.

Luke 3:22 “As he was praying, heaven was opened, and the Holy Spirit descended on him in bodily form like a dove.”

There were no human dignitaries at Jesus’ baptism, unless you count John the Baptist. There were no prestigious representatives from the Temple, and none of his family so far as we know.

There were, however, a couple of prestigious guests of the highest order. They weren’t “special guests” in the sense that their presence was somehow unusual at a baptism. The truth is, they attend every baptism, including yours and mine. At this one, they simply made their presence known with an unusually public display.

First, we see the Holy Spirit. “Heaven was opened,” Luke tells us, not as though the bird had to be let out of a cage. He is reminding us, rather, that what separates heaven from earth is not some great physical distance, as though heaven is to be found on some distant planet on the far side of the universe. Heaven is always near us, but closed off, on the other side of an other-worldly visual barrier between God’s home and ours. When it suits him, he opens the door and comes through in a way we can see, as he does here.

The Holy Spirit came to anoint Jesus for his saving work. It is not as though this was their first contact, or the beginning of the Spirit’s presence in his life. You never have true faith in God without God’s Spirit being involved. Every believing child of God is a temple of the Holy Spirit, as Paul writes the Corinthians, and that would be especially true of God’s one and only Son.

In Jesus’ case, the Spirit’s anointing did two things. It officially marked the beginning of his saving ministry, like the inauguration of a president or the swearing in of a public official. In the book of Acts the Apostle Peter explained on a mission visit to a man named Cornelius, “You know what has happened throughout Judea, beginning in Galilee after the baptism that John preached–how God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and power…” It is after this anointing that Jesus makes himself a public figure, and pursues the work of saving us from sin for all to see.

Our own baptisms may or may not be our first interaction with the Holy Spirit. But they likewise mark a beginning. We don’t become little saviors, but we are active members of his team and participants in his mission. At our baptisms the Holy Spirit may not be visible, but he is clearly marking us for his side in the battle for human hearts.

The other reason the Spirit came to Jesus at his baptism was power. Peter mentioned it in the words I quoted from Acts. All the gospel writers tell us it was the Spirit who led him from here to his showdown with the devil in the wilderness. After that, Luke says, Jesus returned to Galilee “in the power of the Spirit” to begin his ministry.

So Jesus, though he was already the powerful Son of God, did not go to work alone. God’s Spirit was also working in and through him all the way. And not a single baptized child of God lives or works alone since. We serve in the power of the Spirit, who comes to our baptisms and stays for our entire life of faith.

Luke 3:21 “When all the people were being baptized, Jesus was baptized, too.”

Jesus didn’t get this day all to himself. The ceremony didn’t take place in the temple witnessed by priests and rabbis. The family hadn’t come from out of town to see. There were no cards or gifts or celebrations afterward.

He stood in line with a sorry assortment of farmers and fishermen, shady merchants and smelly shepherds, greedy tax collectors and intimidating soldiers, hard-drinking men and loose-living women and whomever else John the Baptist had convinced to repent. He stood there with the rest of them, and when his turn came, Jesus was baptized in a dirty little creek called the Jordan River. “When all the people were being baptized, Jesus was baptized, too,” just like all the sinners around him. He was baptized with us all.

But why? He had no sins for which to repent. He had no old life that needed to die, no new life he needed to embrace. A tangible, visible statement of God’s cleansing grace and forgiveness seems wasted on the only perfect person who ever lived. He had the pure heart and soul, the clean life that those who understand aspire to receive. Do you take the clean dishes out of the dishwasher and wash them again before you put them away? Would you bring new furniture home from the store, and have it cleaned before it has ever been used?

Jesus came to be one of us. He came to stand with us all. Yes, he had no sins, not even one. But his life played out as though he did. He knew deep hunger, nearly starvation during his forty days in the wilderness. He felt the sting of rejection, the bullying and shaming of the Pharisees, the betrayal and abandonment of his closest friends. He suffered grief and loss. His father Joseph died sometime during his teens or twenties. The death of his friend Lazarus brought him to tears. This isn’t a life for the sinless Son of God. These are the burdens human sinners bear. These are the wages of our sins, no particular sin necessarily, but the consequences we brought on ourselves for spoiling God’s perfect creation.

Jesus could have stood above it all. He didn’t. He lived the life the sinners lived–not sharing their sins, but sharing all the misery and unpleasantness that was common for a Jewish peasant living in relative poverty 2000 years ago, and then some.

In another sense, he did share our sins, though, didn’t he. He didn’t commit his own. He carried the responsibility for ours. He did more than become one of us. He became us. Our sins made him dirty. Our lives soiled his own.

How could he not, then, stand with those sinners along the banks of the Jordan river waiting to be baptized? Why would he not desire this sign, this statement, this seal and promise of God’s cleansing grace, considering the burden he carried?

Jesus went to worship every Sabbath, not just to keep an old, musty rule. His heart, too, was refreshed and uplifted by the words of God’s love that were read, sung, and prayed there.

Jesus stood along the banks of the Jordan with a motley assortment of sinners, and in the waters of his baptism God poured out his grace on him. Jesus made himself one of us, and so he was baptized, too.

Acts 13:47-48 “We had to speak the word of God to you first. Since you reject it and do not consider yourselves worthy of eternal life, we now turn to the Gentiles. For this is what the Lord has commanded us: ‘I have made you a light for the Gentiles, that you may bring salvation to the ends of the earth.’ When the Gentiles heard this, they were glad and honored the word of the Lord; and all who were appointed for eternal life believed.”

The basis on which God saves anyone from death and hell is relatively easy to understand. A trade, an exchange of sorts, took place at Jesus’ cross. There he satisfied God’s justice for the sins of the whole world. The debt of all people was paid. The penalty for the whole of humanity was served and erased. Forgiveness was secured for the entire population.

The fate of any particular individual is a little trickier to understand. Some believe God’s grace, receive it, and are saved. Some reject God’s grace and are lost. We see both happen in this brief story from Acts. The bothersome question has been, “Why some, not others?” Does responsibility for both faith and unbelief belong to God? Are they both the sole choice of man?

The Lord does not feel obligated to follow normal human logic here. Of course, when has he ever felt a need to limit himself to our understanding? Precisely because he is God, his mind, his ways, his understanding get to be bigger than ours. When someone doesn’t believe the gospel, the fault lies entirely with them. “Since you reject it,” Paul says.

When people believe the gospel, it is their own faith to be sure. It is working in their hearts, not someone else’s. But they can’t claim any credit for it: “…all who were appointed for eternal life believed.” The Lord makes sure of their faith in ways that go beyond our investigation.

The upshot isn’t to provide us with an intellectual understanding of the process. Who can say they really understand it? It is rather to leave us with the comfort and confidence that our salvation from first to last, from forgiveness to faith, lies entirely in God’s hands. We are saved by grace, a gift, all the way.

And that is important to remember for our life and witness in the part of the world we call home. “All who are appointed for eternal life will believe.” God has made you and me a light, and our responsibility begins and ends with doing what lights do: they shine. What impact that will have on the darkness, where they will light new lights of faith, we can leave to the Lord who has had this all sorted out from the very start.

Lights don’t shine by command. You don’t talk them into it. They shine because of what they are. It’s what lights do. God has made you a light. Let it shine, and let him worry about the rest.

Acts 13:47 “For this is what the Lord has commanded us: ‘I have made you a light for the Gentiles, that you may bring salvation to the ends of the earth.’”

Just where are the ends of the earth? This is no Bible claim for a flat earth. Actually, there are passages in Isaiah and Job that hint at a spherical understanding of our planet, much like the Greeks understood from before the time of Christ.

Paul and Barnabas may not have known there were whole new continents beyond the Atlantic Ocean. But if they did, they would have concluded that those, too, were part of the “ends of the earth.” Anywhere there were lands and people, the Lord wanted them to take the gospel light, until they ran out of both.

Although this is an Old Testament passage, it was a different way of thinking than Paul and Barnabas grew up with. They were accustomed to the idea that only Jewish people would believe in the God who reveals himself in the Bible. You might interest a stray non-Jew here and there, but for the most part talking about religion to them was a waste of breath.

Now, right here in the very Gentile city of Antioch in Pisidia, in central modern Turkey, Jews were rejecting God’s word about a Messiah and salvation by grace through faith, and Gentiles, non-Jews, were embracing it. The “ends of the earth” didn’t end at the city of Antioch. But on this day they started there.

Today we can see that the “ends of the earth” involves far more geography and population than Paul or Barnabas could have dreamed of. They were aware of three continents. We know seven. Their world population was less than 200 million. We have surpassed 8 billion. The distance and the numbers look daunting. We may fear there is too much to cover. Our time, our reach, our resources are limited.

It’s true, you or I or our little church can’t reach everyone ourselves. But the gospel light is seeing exciting growth in places like China, Pakistan, Nepal, Vietnam, Thailand, sub-Saharan Africa, all over Latin America. You and I are part of it through our offerings and our prayers.

And though the “ends of the earth” don’t end in your hometown, that is where they begin. Let’s not make the mistake of thinking the gospel is only for one particular kind of people: only people who already look and think a lot like us are going to believe it. My current hometown prides itself on its diversity. “Building an inclusive community” has become the city’s motto. The university here attracts people from all around the world. They may not be looking for Jesus now, but then, when have people who don’t know him ever been looking for him? Certainly not when Paul and Barnabas preached.

God has made you and me a light or the nations, starting where we live today. Let’s not be diverted from that mission by any artificial limits we perceive.

Acts 13:45-47 “When the Jews saw the crowds, they were filled with jealousy and talked abusively against what Paul was saying. Then Paul and Barnabas answered them boldly: ‘We had to speak the word of God to you first. Since you reject it and do not consider yourselves worthy of eternal life, we now turn to the Gentiles. For this is what the Lord has commanded us: ‘I have made you a light for the Gentiles…’”

Light isn’t always welcome. Sometimes the reasons are innocent enough. You are tired and want to sleep. You work odd shifts and have to sleep during the day, so you install black out curtains on your windows.

Sometimes the reasons are more sinister. People indulge their vices in the dark. “Nothing good happens after midnight,” the saying goes. Thieves operate at night. Maybe they even cut the power or remove light bulbs to cover their work. They want to keep it dark.

Paul ran into people like that on his missionary journeys. Spiritually, they preferred the darkness. They weren’t criminals for the most part. They weren’t living what most would consider grossly immoral lives. Many, like the Jewish members of the synagogue he was debating here, seemed quite virtuous. They worked hard at keeping God’s laws. They attended worship and Bible study every week.

But in shining the light of Jesus on them, with his faith based on grace and forgiveness, Paul was exposing more subtle sins tucked back in the dark recesses of their hearts. These people had become graceless. They were legalists. Their own pride told them that they had made it, morally. But they did not want to reckon with sins of the mind and the heart: their contempt for other people, their selfishness, their lusts, their love affair with themselves. It’s not just that they didn’t want other people to see their faults. They didn’t want to see them themselves.

So they pushed back against the light. They tried to cut the power, and remove the bulbs Paul and Barnabas were lighting. The apostles gave them what they wanted. “Since you reject it and do not consider yourselves worthy of eternal life, we now turn to the Gentiles.”

There are two warnings for us here. One has to do with how we react when the light shines on our own lives. The religion of Jesus emphasizes the grace and forgiveness of God. But that means God’s word will expose the things in our lives that need his grace and forgiveness. It isn’t pretty to look at, but it is the way it has to work. Sin is like a cancer that has metastasized. Maybe repentance and forgiveness has removed the life threatening tumor in one place. But hidden deep within the tissues on the other side of the body another tumor grows, perhaps tiny at first, of a different shape, producing no symptoms, imperceptible at the time. When it finally comes to light, you can’t ignore it. You certainly don’t want to protect it or feed it. It has to go under the knife of repentance and forgiveness. All sin, like cancer, is life threatening. In the balance are heaven or hell.

The other warning has to do with our own words of witness. You are a Christian. God has made you a light to our world. That is true no matter the reception you receive. People like the darkness. They have grown comfortable with it. We have felt comfortable with it. So don’t be surprised when friends, family, neighbors, coworkers, or casual acquaintances aren’t interested in what Jesus is giving away. Don’t let it dim your light.

Sometimes we read about the explosive growth of the early church in Acts and wonder why we don’t see successes like that. Remember that everywhere Paul went far more, far more, people rejected his gospel, often violently. Don’t be surprised today if the gospel’s reception is a little chilly more often than not. Not everyone wants to come into the light.

1 Peter 2:2-3 “Like newborn babies, crave pure spiritual milk, so that by it you may grow up in your salvation, now that you have tasted that the Lord is good.”

When Peter compares us to newborn babies here, he is not criticizing our lack of spiritual maturity. The term is used that way other places in Scripture, but here he puts a positive spin on the idea. Nor is he opposing growth and maturity, as though we should remain spiritual infants forever. He specifically tells us that he wants us to grow up in our salvation. More about that in just a moment.

His one point of comparison between us and newborns is this: There is only one food appropriate for newborn babies (at least, before the development of infant formula). That is their mother’s milk. It is the only thing the baby wants. It is the only thing the baby’s body can handle. Variety may be the spice of life, but variety is no good when it comes to feeding infants. They need nothing but their mother’s milk.

In the same way we who are God’s newborns by faith need only one thing on which to feed– the pure, spiritual milk of the Word. It is the only thing our faith wants. It is the only thing our faith can handle. Any variety mixed in from human philosophy, false theology, or human speculation threatens to make us sick. It could even be fatal.

In order for that spiritual milk to be truly nourishing for our souls, it must contain God’s word of Gospel, his good news in Jesus Christ. Do you ever shop at Christian bookstores? There you will find some shelves with Bibles, and Bible commentaries, and books on church history and various world religions. But what fills row after row and shelf after shelf are books on Christian living, books dedicated to telling you how to live your life. I’m not going to say that those books don’t contain any useful information. Maybe you could find helpful hints for dealing with some issue that comes up in your life.

But without the gospel of God’s love for you in Jesus, such books cannot grow you up in your salvation. Without God’s promises of what he is doing for you, there is no food for your soul, no nourishment for your faith, no matter how helpful the words may be otherwise. You don’t grow closer to God when he is telling you what to do. Your trust in him doesn’t deepen and become more secure when you are concentrating on how your life matches up with his commands. Your heart’s intent to do things his way, your willpower to avoid sin and pursue love, doesn’t come from doing what God demands.

God is drawing you closer, and making you stronger, and driving faith deeper, when the words on which our faith is feeding are about the things that he does for us. That good news is not a limited subject to fit into a few paragraphs or a chapter in a book. I can’t do it full justice in a single sermon or a lifetime of sermons. It spans all the love that God has had for you from electing you to be his own even before he created the word, to directing the course of human history to prepare the way for Jesus, to the whole loving life of Jesus, to the events of Jesus’ trial-cross-and empty tomb that we know so well, to Jesus’ running the world for us from heaven, to his promise to return to take us there. It is expressed in his promise to forgive our sins, declare us not guilty of them, reconcile us to himself, come to us in word and sacrament, give us his Holy Spirit, and ultimately raise us from the dead.

The Gospel of God’s love for you is a gem with many, many facets. There are far too few books whose expressed purpose is to help us mine the Bible’s riches in exploring each one. But if we want to grow up in our faith and salvation, let’s crave and consume this pure spiritual milk. It is just the milk our spirit needs.

1 Peter 2:1-2 “Therefore, rid yourselves of all malice and all deceit, hypocrisy, envy, and slander of every kind. Like newborn babies, crave pure spiritual milk.”

Newborns are not so innocent as they look. We were all born in original sin. Sin is a condition, an inescapable orientation. It thoroughly corrupts our hearts, minds, and wills from the first moment of our existence. Those babies may not be actively pursuing a life of crime. They lack the physical maturity to do so. In terms of how they treat the people around them, they are relatively innocent.

When God gave us our spiritual birth by bringing us to faith, whether by baptism or the preaching of his word, we did not suddenly cease all sinful activity. But God did forgive all our sins. He applied Jesus’ payment for our sins on the cross to each of us personally. Now our Lord pronounces us sinless, regards us as sinless, and deals with us as though we were sinless. We don’t just look innocent, like those newborn babies. As God’s spiritual newborns, in his eyes we actually are innocent.

The same faith through which we know and receive God’s grace and forgiveness also sets us free from our slavery to sin. That doesn’t mean we have stopped sinning altogether. But in faith we want to. And God’s own power working in us gives us the ability to resist sin and pursue love. We can strive to live as innocent as God in his grace says we look. We live as God’s newborns, repenting and ridding ourselves of evil deeds like those Peter lists here.

“Therefore, rid yourselves of all malice…” This vice encompasses everything that follows. Malice is the opposite of love. Perhaps you can be angry with someone you love. But malice and love cannot coexist toward the same person. When we are full of malice, we want only to hurt them.

We may not become close friends with everyone we meet. Different values, beliefs, and priorities may be valid reasons for keeping our distance from some. When we know someone poses a danger to others, we might even have to take steps that lead to their suffering: turning in a criminal, or using physical force to prevent them from hurting someone else. None of this is malice. But when we start to find satisfaction in their pain or misfortune, whether or not we were the cause, we have crossed the line. We have given malice a foothold in our lives.

Does that seem relatively rare among us? Or could you think of the name of a person right now– perhaps a political figure or entertainer, some loudmouth at work, an obnoxious neighbor, someone who has hurt you–that you would like to “stick it to”? Their misfortune would bring you some hint of happiness. Peter calls on us to repent and rid ourselves of malice, so that we can live as spiritual newborns this new year.

Next, Peter urges us to unload our “deceit.” Why would God’s children want to lie to each other? Isn’t there a hefty dose of disrespect we display to those we deceive? When a lie is exposed, are we ever better off than if we had simply owned up to the sin in the first place? Deceit is another evil deed to unload this New Year.

“Hypocrisy” may seem strange to find on Peter’s list. Can a person have the new birth of faith and be a hypocrite all at the same time? Isn’t a hypocrite a “false Christian”? Aren’t these two things mutually exclusive? How could Peter address this to believers?

Understand that there is more than one kind of hypocrisy. The word “hypocrite” was originally the Greek word for an “actor” on the stage. Actors pretend to be people they are not. Since Bible times the term has been applied to those who pretend that they are Christians.

Sometimes true believers also do some pretending. Though they have faith in their hearts, they fall into treating certain people one way to their face, another behind their backs. They may butter a person up to get some advantage out of them. They may hide their disrespect and disdain. Whatever the reason, this is a kind of hypocrisy. Someone is putting on an act.

Peter urges us to be straight with each other. That is not permission to be rude or impolite. He is not excusing us from genuine Christian love. But he does want us to deal with each other in an honest way. If we have problems with others, we ought to deal with them openly and lovingly. If we are putting on a front to hide our dislike, it is the attitude, not the behavior, that has to change.

“Envy” is another strange sin for God’s children. Why should it bother us when someone else does well? Why can’t we simply find joy when they are successful? God has chosen not to distribute his material blessings in different amounts to each individual. But the most important blessings are the same for us all. We share the same forgiveness, faith, Savior, heaven, and eternal life. God promises that he has custom tailored our individual earthly lives to fit our individual earthly needs. Envy makes no sense for those who live under God’s blessing.

Finally, Peter urges us to rid ourselves of “slander of every kind.” The Greek term for slander is wide enough to embrace any kind of negative speech about someone, even criticisms that are true. You know how easy it is to start talking about a person who is not present. Someone thinks of a funny story about that person. Someone else points out a negative trait of the individual. Soon, without intending to do so, we are enjoying ourselves at the expense of their reputation. No matter how the conversation came to this point, this isn’t love. It may be true, but like the other practices on Peter’s list, it is not compatible with Christian living.

With the New Year, many will be making resolutions for self-improvement. Often we aim them at health and physical well-being. Why not make resolutions with a spiritual emphasis, like addressing the vices Peter has identified for us? Let’s be the innocent children God has made us.