This time an introduction to 1 Peter! Why is it valuable?
It’s valuable because our Christian life involves two types of experience. The norm – let’s be clear – is the release of God’s blessing: prayers being answered, God’s kingdom being forwarded, progress forward step by step as His church is built. But sometimes it’s not like that at all. There are tough times that feel like (to use old testament parallels) wilderness, or exile. . God cares about these times too; and we all surely need to be well `armed` for them, as 1 Peter 4:1 puts it.
So 1 Peter is one of the books God has given us for and about these tough times; look at 1:6-7, 2:19-23, 3:9,14, 4:12-13,19, and 5:9-10. It’s about being `aliens and strangers in the world` (1:1, 2:11); we’re on our way to the promised land, but right now we’re somewhere where we don’t fit, somewhere that may well feel like wilderness. It’s about lives where we have problems and no miraculous solutions. Peter had certainly seen many miracles (not just when he was with Jesus, but also in Acts 12 when – unlike James (12:2), or John the Baptist – he was miraculously delivered from prison and probable execution). But miracles aren’t what he points to here; this book is about how we handle wilderness. How for example we handle wilderness relationships that aren’t easily changed, in chapters 2&3 – difficult relations with rulers (bosses?) (2:12-15); slavery (2:18); relationships marked by hurling of insults (2:21-23); marriages marked by fear (3:6); churches where harmony isn’t easy & has to be a very deliberate choice (3:8-9).
Peter brings his own experience to this. It’s a very personal letter: we can listen for hints of Peter’s own story at the heart of what he writes. Don’t we sense memories of his moments of failure, as he seeks to guard his readers (4:1) from disasters like his own self-protective denial of Christ? He calls himself `one who will share in the glory to be revealed`, but only someone who has `witnessed Christ’s sufferings` (5:1); unlike his readers who, he says, `participate in the sufferings of Christ` (4:13). (And yet, he is still someone who `will share in the glory`, even though he has failed!) It’s honest, humble, realistic. And don’t we also sense echoes of his last (probably life-shaping) encounter with Jesus, in John 21:15ff? – first as we read his concern that God’s `shepherds’ care for God’s sheep through tough times (5:1-2); but also in his desire to strengthen his readers for experiences of suffering – such, indeed, as he knew from that conversation lay ahead in his own future (John 21:19. Jesus had told him he was going to be crucified, and that can never have been far from his thoughts.) Suffering: how do we handle that? How do we `arm ourselves` to handle wilderness experiences, since they come to us all sometime?
God gives us six answers, six revelations, in the first chapter. Which might be the most important for you right now?
1. Look at what Peter takes as his starting point in 1:3. It’s a deliberate choice to praise – something apparently vital if we’re to handle suffering. But for what? Two things: praise for the certainty of our new birth, and praise for where that new birth is pointing: our `living hope` of a glorious inheritance to come (1:4). Praise, in short, for the spectacular future glory awaiting each of us! This joyful certainty is a big new testament theme; 1 Thessalonians 5 calls it our helmet that protects our thinking in tough times; Hebrews 6 calls it our anchor – an anchor which, taking firm hold of what we cannot see, stops us being blown around on the ocean’s surface. Have we in our day lost our nerve on this topic of the wonder of heaven; is it a vision we need to recover? We’re built for unimaginable glory there, thankyou Lord! This awareness is our helmet, our anchor; as we choose to actually praise God for it, we’ll internalize it, and so handle better the wilderness and the trials it brings us.
2. In 1:6 he gets onto the trials. But let’s notice how they fit into the previous verses: for Peter there are two things, suffering and glory – this is a really key awareness – that go together like two sides of a coin. Look at 1:7, 4:13, and 5:10. (And Paul in eg Romans 8:17-18.). If cross, then resurrection; if suffering, then glory; again, it’s a certainty. And that certainty of the two being tied together will bring a sense of purpose into our wilderness times. Peter calls us to choose to live by faith in it (1:5). God values our faith enormously, he says, and therefore wants it proved genuine; that in fact is the point of the trials (1:7). It’s like the things that happen to Job: they’re unexplained, but just because of that they function like a gym for this faith. Grasp this, says Peter: in suffering and trials, fix your eyes in deliberate faith that they’re tied to huge glory that’s coming to you (cf Phil 3:20-4:1). And above all, he continues, fix them on the biggest glory of all (pause perhaps to look at John 17:24): your union with the Christ you love (1:8). Through the millions of years of eternity, the wonder of these things will make our wilderness experience so worth it!
3. Therefore what? Therefore ` prepare your minds for action`, says Peter (1:13; cf 4:1,7); choose a deliberate mental stance. And one key aspect stands out here, the alternative of desires. Our lives are defined by what we desire, what therefore we put our energies into. So on the one hand Peter challenges us again, `Set your hope fully on the grace to be given you when Jesus Christ is revealed` (1:13); long for that! But there are competing, wrong desires we can focus on instead (1:14). This choice of desires is a big theme for Peter (see also 2:11, 4:2, & 2 Peter 1:4, 2:10,18, 3:3); evidently we’ll be dominated by one set or the other. So then: What desires drop into my head when I’m not absorbed by anything else? Success? Security? Relationship? Money, sex and power? God says to us through Peter: You will grow in the wilderness as you choose deliberately to set your desire in one direction above all, on Christ’s revelation at the second coming and the colossal glory to follow!
4. Surviving & thriving in the wilderness: what else is there in chapter 1? `Be holy… for it is written, “Be holy, because I am holy”` (God’s holiness is not something negative; think rather of white-hot, radiant glory!); `live your lives as strangers here in reverent fear` (vv15-17) – that is, profound awe at God, leading into a passion to do what God wants. Such a passion will make us distinctive: it will indeed mean going the way of the Father (v17) rather than the way of our fathers or peers. We are `strangers` here (1:1, 2:11); we don’t entirely belong, we won’t act the same way as those around us; and we shouldn’t expect to.
But what is this holiness? Peter speaks several times of being `self-controlled` or `sober` (1:13,4:7,5:8). (That doesn’t feel too 21st century!) But holiness isn’t something negative. That’s why he says a lot about the good deeds that result from true new birth (2:12,15,3:1-2,13,16). Above all the holiness he speaks of is about love (1:22), and is expressed in working at transformed relationships; hence what he tells us in 2:11 through to 3:12. And yes, as we’ve said he’s talking about relationships in a wilderness context, relationships that have gone wrong; difficult relations with rulers, slavery, relationships marked by hurling of insults, marriages marked by fear, churches where harmony has to be a very deliberate choice (3:8-9). These actually are where we learn to live out holiness, where we grow.
But why do we bother? For at least two reasons. Look at 2:21: Christ bothered when He suffered for those who hated Him. We work at our own difficult wilderness relationships because Jesus did. Sharing sometimes in His wilderness suffering is therefore central to our calling; we are `called` to it (2:21). But therefore, of course, we are called to glory (4:13, 3:9)! Calvary is our example in the wilderness (2:21-24, 3:17-18, 4:1,13) – one reason why we need to keep taking communion, to refresh our grasp of it. The cross, and then resurrection, are our model for how we envisage our life, and our discipleship…
5. Having Calvary central to our mindset is one foundation enabling us to grow in the wilderness in practical love, in transformed relationships. But Peter provides another, the new birth (1:22-2:1); `Love one another deeply, for you have been born again!` Why bring this up now? Because it’s what happened in the new birth that gives us the essential power to do it. We are `born again, not of perishable seed, but of imperishable, through the living and enduring Word of God`, he says; and this may remind us of John’s joyfully confident words in 1 John 3:9 that `no one who is born of God will continue to sin, because God’s seed remains in him; he cannot go on sinning, because he has been born of God!` Set out to live a life of holiness & love, Peter is saying, and you’ll find you have all the power you need within you, and you can! It’s “natural” to you now, because of your new birth, when something imperishable came into your soul (1:23).
All around us, and in ourselves too, we see signs of what Paul (Rom 8:21) calls the `bondage to decay` that has been here since the Fall; but into this world there has come something imperishable, something `living & abiding`: power from a different universe altogether, power for us that transcends the Fall and everything here that is in bondage to decay, to entropy. And where particularly do we find it? Look at 1:23: it’s the seed of the Word. God’s Word is the presence of the alternative, a different universe altogether, the universe of heaven. And he’s not just saying something mystical here: practically, `this is the Word that was preached to you!`(1:25; and see 4:11). So, he says, `long for pure spiritual milk`, or as the NASB etc have it (justifiably, because the word for `spiritual` is `logikos`, like `logos`) `the pure milk of the Word` (2:2). Crave the Word! Daily in your own time with God, and discussed in homegroup, and absorbed as exposition at church: three essential, mutually complementary routes. As you do, you’re drinking in the power to thrive in the wilderness…
6. So at the end of this first section Peter presents two commands that he unpacks throughout the letter. That’s one, and we’ve just quoted the other: `love one another deeply, from the heart` (1:22 – going through to 2:1). This is not just a casual hobby – the reason for it is `for you have been born again!` (1:23). And in the following chapters he shares how living as the community of real, supernatural Church, as God’s `spiritual house` (2:5), is vital in the wilderness. There’s a potentially hilarious idea here – we are `like living stones, being built into a spiritual house` – imagine (this might make a great sketch) how it would be trying to build a house if you were using, as Jesus is, `living stones` each of which tend to have different ideas of where they should be and go wandering off! But `love one another deeply from the heart` implies something very deliberate. (Cf Ephesians 4:3: `Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit`.) Biblically, love is first not a feeling but an obedience to a command; a feeling, as Trobisch says, to be learned. We’re called to deny those ways of relating that are normal in the decay-oriented outside world; and here in the wilderness to deliberately affirm each other, encourage each other, thank God for each other, pray for each other…
There’s so much here that will become clear as we feed on this book, and reflect, and pray; things that will mean we cope with what the wilderness throws at us, and really grow through it all! Two last comments, because it’s a very rich letter. First, let’s listen out for echoes of Exodus. These are unsurprising – Peter had after all been on the `sacred mountain` (2 Peter 1:18) where he actually saw Moses, and heard Jesus describing his coming crucifixion as his `exodus` (Luke 9:31 literally). So it’s not surprising to hear echoes of the books of Moses in the sprinkling by blood of 1:2, the blood of the lamb in 1:19, the (literally) `gird up the loins of your mind` (NKJV) of 1:13 (like the passover dress code), and the pervasive vision of the inheritance that will follow our wilderness time. The Exodus history teaches us how to handle wilderness: with a clear sense of God’s calling to our journey; a sense of His presence, like in the tabernacle; a sense of a goal; a sense of expectancy. These things underlie 1 Peter, and they’re empowering for us!
And a second thing is Peter’s fascinating closing remark in 5:12: ` I have written to you briefly, encouraging you and testifying that this is the true grace of God.` Grace – God’s enormous, undeserved kindness: do we really understand grace? Well, in this epistle, says Peter, he has explained what it means for us. Our anchor is what God’s grace, His massive kindness, has done, is doing, will do. We grow in salvation because we have tasted the kindness, the grace, of the Lord (2:3; NIV `now that you have tasted that the Lord is good`), and because we look forward to experiencing that grace enormously in the future (1:13). (Let’s notice too (this alas is very needful in our time), that in defining `the true grace of God`, Peter doesn’t present it as something to which holiness and keeping God’s commands (there are lots in this letter) are suddenly irrelevant. God’s grace is indeed totally unearned, but `this`, including all the life-instructions Peter has passed on as inspired by God’s Spirit, `is the true grace of God.`)
So we survive through the wilderness because of the presence of God’s grace keeping us, and because of our own grasp by faith of that grace taking us through! We’ll find lots more about grace in this letter; grace is the process, grace is what Christ has done, is doing, will do; grace IS salvation!
So then: how is Jesus calling us to live more richly and joyously through 1 Peter? Which of these themes speaks right now to you? Let’s pray that this book will feed us and put steel into our souls for the journey till Christ’s glory comes!
