The First, Formal, and Final Causes of Salvation
“Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! According to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you, who by God’s power are being guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.”
1 Peter 1:3-5
Anyone who has been around my preaching or teaching over the years knows how often I appeal to causal analysis. The Reformed tradition used to do this all the time before the twentieth century—although, those of you raised on the ministry of R. C. Sproul have some familiarity with it is well. I refer to those four main causes handed down from Aristotle. Thinking people used to speak along these lines in order to clarify how causes reflated to just about any kind of effect. Salvation is no different.
There is the first (or efficient) cause, which is the main cause itself (the Actor). There is the final (or end) cause, which is the reason for its action, or the goal. There is the material cause, which is that which is acted upon; and then there is the formal cause, which is the essence of the thing, its “shape.” In this passage, the Apostle Peter concentrates on the first, formal, and final causes in a very Trinitarian way.
Doctrine. God’s mercy, Christ’s resurrection, and the Spirit’s preservation guarantee the believer’s inheritance.
We will see this Trinitarian causal analysis in the three sections in the text:
(i.) God’s mercy is a first cause of our inheritance.
(ii.) Christ’s resurrection is a formal cause of our inheritance.
(iii.) The Spirit’s preservation is a final cause of our inheritance.
God’s mercy is a first cause of our inheritance.
Peter begins here in a doxology: ‘Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ!’ (v. 3a) The same way that Ephesians 1:3 begins for Paul, a word of praise to God for the salvation that He brings us. Isn’t it interesting that in the two places where Paul most famously unpacks the doctrine of predestination, that he ends that longest section of Romans 9 through 11 with a declaration of wonder and worship to God, and that in the other place, Ephesians 1, he begins in thanksgiving? It is the same for Peter. Contemplating God’s love that marked us out before the stars ever began burning ought to direct our hearts toward God, and make much of Him.
In terms of what causes what in salvation, the Bible leaves no wiggle room for any merit in ourselves. He says, ‘According to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope’ (v. 3b).1 What is mercy? It has been said that while grace means getting the good we do not deserve, mercy means not getting the bad thing we do deserve. That is a very good way to put it. In mercy, justice has relented. Punishment has been turned aside. So many misunderstandings in the Christian life come from forgetting mercy. When those arch legalists of Jesus’s day—the Pharisees—looked down on the people who drew near to Jesus, what sort of things did He say? He said,
Go and learn what this means: ‘I desire mercy, and not sacrifice.’ For I came not to call the righteous, but sinners (Mat. 9:13).
Therefore I tell you, her sins, which are many, are forgiven—for she loved much. But he who is forgiven little, loves little” (Luke 7:47).
Peter is saying that God has great mercy. Every sinner had better hope so! That is because every sinner is a great sinner. Those who have been shown it, show it. And that what election is all about. It bursts our bubble like no other truth. When Paul says to the Corinthians, “[He] is the source of your life in Christ Jesus” (1 Cor. 1:30), it was to deflate the pride of that church. If you don’t believe God is the source of your salvation—the first cause of your salvation—then you don’t believe it was by mercy. You believe it was your just due.
Christ’s resurrection is a formal cause of our inheritance.
Note the causal connection again here—God has ‘caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead’ (v. 3c). We call this a formal cause because it is the “form” or “shape” that it takes. The resurrection of Christ was more than the supernatural stamp on His whole work of redemption. It was more than the great miracle that demonstrates the truth of Christianity. It is both of those things. But it is also the power of God that encompasses and causes our new birth. See Peter’s language—the cause of being born again is through the resurrection. Let me show you three other important passages that teach this.
If then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above (Col. 3:1).
God … even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved—and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus (Eph. 2:4-6).
Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life. He does not come into judgment, but has passed from death to life. Truly, truly, I say to you, an hour is coming, and is now here, when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who hear will live (Jn. 5:24-25).
Now the fact that there is an ‘an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading’ (v. 4a) is always connected to Jesus in Scripture because, as our Representative, Jesus becomes more than our Savior. He becomes our elder Brother who shares His inheritance with us.2
In him we have obtained an inheritance (Eph. 1:11).
if children [of God], then heirs—heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, provided we suffer with him in order that we may also be glorified with him (Rom. 8:17).
This is described in three ways here that are almost synonyms—almost—as if Peter wanted to force his reader to pause and peer into this invisible, immaterial treasure box, filled with what is infinitely more real than that which is visible and material. This cannot die (imperishable), cannot be morally polluted or make one ashamed (undefiled), and cannot ever be lost or grow old or dull (unfading). As I was standing around a fire the other night in Charlotte, one of the prospective students asked, “What is happiness?” A great philosophical question! But actually, among the most practical that everyone must care about. I leaned back on Augustine—but also Peter right here—in that ultimate happiness must have at least two ingredients for finite beings: it must be ever-increasing and it must be never-ending. If it is not, you will become satiated and you will always be anxious for its loss. But these descriptions by Peter defy those worries.
The Spirit’s preservation is a final cause of our inheritance.
Notice that there is both a thing and a person being preserved. First, there is that thing already introduced: the inheritance. It is this inheritance that is ‘kept in heaven for you’ (v. 4c). Kept (τηρέω) in the perfect participle form suggests something more than merely a past action. It does not even leave things at a passive non-action in the present, but it gives the sense of God having that thing on a most personal lockdown: “My soul clings to you; your right hand upholds me” (Ps. 63:8). Would you hold on to the most precious thing with the tightest grip? God holds infinitely harder. Nothing escapes His grasp.
But the main focus of preservation is you. That is why the perseverance of the saints goes inside of the preservation of the saints. I never pit these against each other. I prefer them both. They are both true. The saints all do persevere to the end—why? Because God the Holy Spirit preserves them. Of course there are passages that relate perseverance to the Father and to the Son as well. For instance,
I give them eternal life, and they will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hand. My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all, and no one is able to snatch them out of the Father’s hand (Jn. 10:28-29).
and everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die (Jn. 11:26).
But recall that it is the Holy Spirit who dwells in the Christian. Therefore, it is the Spirit who works in the believer that which actively perseveres. And what is that which does so in this passage? You ‘who by God’s power are being guarded through faith’ (v. 5a). How so? “For everyone who has been born of God overcomes the world. And this is the victory that has overcome the world—our faith” (1 Jn. 5:4). There is the key. Faith is an overcoming thing because faith is a looking over and above thing. It believes God for that which nothing in this present world can contain. Faith is also a gift of God, and it is through the new heart which is given by the Spirit—“that which is born of the Spirit is spirit” (Jn. 3:6). Thus that which is spiritual in us sees that “every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places” (Eph. 1:3). God uses our faith, by the immediate power of the Spirit, to fix our very beings on the inheritance. He does this with every-increasing strength.
And I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ (Phi. 1:6)
In summary, the work that God began in us and which, according to Peter’s focus, begins to join in with God’s keeping power, is faith.
A word should be said about that last part, namely, ‘for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time’ (v. 5b). Many struggle with the different “tenses” of salvation, especially when it is in the future tense. But as Sproul reminds us, “the Bible uses the verb to save in every tense of the Greek language. There is a sense in which we were saved from the foundation of the world. We were being saved, we are saved, and we are being saved, but ultimately we shall be saved when we enter into the fullness of the inheritance that is being reserved.”3
This salvation revealed on that Day or hour or moment is really the substance of the salvation revealed—namely, Christ Himself. To be fully and finally brought home is to be brought, face to face, with the One your soul was made for.
Beloved, we are God’s children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared; but we know that when he appears we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is (1 Jn. 3:2).
A future salvation is the best news—not different news, but the crowning jewel of the gospel.
Practical Use of the Doctrine
Use 1. Correction. Although I generally touched on it, it is worth making sure that we understand. Peter specifically address regeneration as that which is by mercy. Note this well. Peter is not only claiming that salvation, in some generic way, is due to God’s mercy. Of course the whole of salvation is. However, he specifically says, ‘According to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again.’ If you have been around Reformed theology for a while, this maxim, that Regeneration precedes faith, may get classified under “old news.” But don’t ever forget just how much the church culture around us has been shaped by a totally contradictory doctrine to that. We hear today of a renewed interest in Christianity. It has increased all the more in Bible sales and church attendance, ever since the death of Charlie Kirk just over a month ago. I hope the news of this rising interest is true. But it will be all the more important, once again, to emphasize these great truths of the doctrines of grace. Regeneration precedes faith. Why does that matter? Peter tells us: It is because it is according to God’s great mercy. The opposite doctrine robs God of His glory and tempts you to think that you earned it.
Use 2. Exhortation. There is an action item. It may not seem like it. The Father does one thing, the Son does another, and the Spirit another. That is salvation—and we do not save ourselves. But when Peter speaks of our faith being that mode through which the Spirit does the keeping, that becomes in us an active grasping hold of the promise. So what is the action item? The answer lies in that treasure box that can be seen by the eyes of faith. Jesus also puts this in the imperative.
Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal, but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also (Mat. 6:19-21).
That takes looking. Scripture is the looking glass into our inheritance. Its ordinary means of studying, meditating upon, practically applying, memorizing, and, yes, hearing sermons, are the vision corrections and vision expansions into that eternal treasure.
Use 3. Consolation. We have a “living hope,” Peter says; and in his commentary, Grudem makes a very good, encouraging point about this description, that,
By so describing it, Peter indicates that it grows and increases in strength year by year. If such a growing hope is the expected result of being born again, then perhaps the degree to which believers have an intense, confident expectation of the life to come is one useful measure of progress toward spiritual maturity. It is not surprising that such a hope is particularly evident in many older Christians as they approach death.4
The other reason that a future salvation is good news is that we are not talking about a mere flash in the pan. That’s such a big part of the sorrow of life, namely, the sadness of having experienced love or even hope, and then one day being a stranger to it. The ultimate promise from the One who has all power to guarantee it is that this love and joy can never, ever be lost.
So, let us actively meditate upon these things today.
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1. It may be that this note about mercy provides balance, or a correcting anchor to anyone who would misread foreknowledge, as Grudem explains: “This being born anew is by his great mercy, a phrase with the same preposition (kata) as ‘according to the foreknowledge’ in verse 2. No foreknowledge of the fact that we would believe, no foreseeing of any desirableness or merit on our part, is mentioned here or anywhere else in Scripture when indicating God’s ultimate reason for our salvation. It is simply ‘according to his great mercy’ that he gave us new life” (1 Peter, 55).
2. cf. Galatians 3:18; Ephesians 1:14, 18; 5:5; Colossians 3:24; Hebrews 9:15.
3. Sproul, 1-2 Peter, 15-16.
4. Grudem, 1 Peter, 55-56.
