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 The
most important things that parents leave their children are not
to be found in the legal language of a will. Peter writes of
certain ones having been redeemed from a vain manner of life and
says that such a life was “handed down from your fathers” (1
Pet. 1:18). Or, as the NASV puts it, “redeemed. . . from your
futile way of life inherited from your forefathers".
Obviously, then, parents do bequeath a way of life to their
children. No other heritage means more; none could be a greater
blessing — or a worse curse; none other is so wrought with
eternal consequences. Since the way of life determines the way
of eternity, there is a very real sense in which parents may
leave their children a legacy of heaven — or hell. Not that
children are not free moral agents to determine their own life
and destinies (these of our text have changed), but God
recognizes parental influence as a powerfully persuasive force
in helping or hindering one’s manner of life.
Seeing
then the possibility of having inherited and, worse, the
possibility of passing on a kind of life God calls “vain”,
it is important that we identify and avoid such living. Peter is
talking about a kind of living that is aimless; that is void of
effect or result. The same word (mataios) is used to describe
talk that is without profit (Titus 1:10; I Tim. 1:6); the
uselessness of religion with an unbridled tongue (Jas. 1:26) and
the emptiness of faith without a resurrected Christ (1 Cor.
15-17). Such is the life where God’s rule is not allowed and
where heaven is not a goal of primary and urgent concern.
Nowhere is this vain living better
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depicted than in Ecclesiastes where the wise
man shows that all of man’s life and labor apart from God is
meaningless; “it is vanity”, an exercise in futility.
As
Peter shows in v. 14, the vain life is characterized by lust and
ignorance. For the most part, men are governed either by
appetite or intellect; by what they want or by what they know.
Vain living is a desire-dominated kind of existence. Paul refers
to a time when we also once lived in the lusts of our flesh,
doing the desires of the flesh and of the mind.. .“ (Eph.
2:3). The vain manner of life could not be better defined. Now
it is not to say that all who live thusly are backward,
uneducated, and irreligious people. On the contrary, the divine
viewpoint sees many among the church-going, the wealthy, the
educated, the cultured and the high-principled whose lives are
not really going anywhere — they are living in vain, “seeing
only what is near”, strictly oriented to the world and its
values. They rarely see themselves as needing to be redeemed,
much less as doing any disservice to their children in so
living.
I
think it would not over-simplify Peter’s principle to say that
ANY life is vain that does not give God first place. Not merely
to say that He’s first; not just to have some sort of “special”
religious feeling, but to actively, urgently and continually
seek to do HIS WILL. This is the point and purpose of life. God
deserves it. Our children need such an
heritage. Dan S. Shipley
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