Dan Olinger

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Peter has briefly given us some help in recognizing false teachers when they show up. Now he spends considerably more column inches telling us what’s going to happen to them. Since God has consistently acted against false prophets in the past to condemn his enemies (2P 2.4-6) and to rescue his people (2P 2.7-8), he will certainly act now to rescue his people (2P 2.9) and to condemn his enemies (2P 2.9-22). 

(Side note: this structure is a chiasm. The Bible contains lots of them.) 

Past Examples 

God condemned the angels who joined Satan in his rebellion (2P 2.4); he condemned those who rejected the preaching of Noah (2P 2.5); and he condemned Sodom and Gomorrah for a whole raft of sins (2P 2.6; cf Ezk 16.49-50). But even in the Flood he rescued Noah and his family (2P 2.5), and even in his destruction of Sodom he saw, loved, and rescued Abraham’s nephew Lot (2P 2.7) because Lot was grieved by what he saw around him in that wicked city (2P 2.8). 

(Side note #2: Observant readers will recognize that these verses also appear in the Epistle of Jude. Older interpreters believed that Jude wrote first and then Peter pulled his words in and rearranged them slightly. They note that Peter says the false teachers “will come,” while Jude says they’re already here. More recent commentators reverse the order. I’m inclined to go with the old guys. But in the end it makes little difference for doctrine or application.) 

Present Certainty 

Well, then. If God has done these things in the past, then we should expect that he will do them again as we face sly attacks from false teachers. He will rescue us (2P 2.9a), and he will “reserve the unjust unto the day of judgment to be punished” (2P 2.9b). 

Specifically, he will judge them for their immorality (2P 2.10a) and for their rejection of authority, including God’s (2P 2.10b). Here he repeats two of the three characteristics of false teachers that he identified earlier in the chapter. 

Their arrogance and rebellion are displayed by their shameless acts “to speak evil of dignities” (2P 2.10c); whether Peter is referring here to human dignities, such as pastors or government officials, or to supernatural beings, Peter does not make clear. But the parallel passage in Jude (Jude 1.9) refers to the account in the apocryphal Assumption of Moses in which the archangel Michael would not rebuke Satan as they contended over the body of Moses. (Unfortunately that portion of the apocryphal manuscript has not survived. And no, I don’t have much light to shine on it.) 

Peter spends the bulk of this chapter on the immoralities of the false teachers. 

They “riot in the daytime” (2P 2.13)—that is, they don’t even have the decency (!) to wait until after dark before they start into their immoral behavior. They have “eyes full of adultery” (2P 2.14)—which is to say that every time they look at a woman, they objectivize and sexualize her. They love “the wages of unrighteousness” (2P 2.15)—and here Peter recalls the third characteristic of false teachers mentioned in the first section of the chapter: they’re in it just for themselves.  

As a result of the emptiness of their worldview, they are unremittingly disappointing. They are “wells without water” (2P 2.17), a common disappointment in the desert climates extensive in the biblical lands. They promise what they can’t deliver. They appeal to the worst instincts of their hearers (2P 2.18), promising them freedom but in fact leading them into the same slavery that engulfs themselves (2P 2.19). 

In the Hebrew Scriptures even Exodus reminds us that life is not about being free from all authority, but about being delivered from an evil master to be placed into service to a good one. If, then, we have escaped an evil master, Peter says, we must not go back. To do so would be worse than if we had never escaped at all (2P 2.21). 

There’s a clear application here. 

If you’re a Chapter 2 person, there is nothing good down the road on which you’re traveling. Repent and believe now, before things get even worse. 

And if you’re a Chapter 1 person, rest assured that God knows you, sees you, and will deliver you from the evil one. Or as Jude says, he “is able to keep you from falling, and to present you faultless before the presence of his glory with exceeding joy” (Jude 24). 

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Peter spends most of his first chapter laying out the reasons that we can be confident in trusting God’s Word. The apostles have spoken it truthfully, some of them even having seen the Lord glorified while he was still on earth. And that experience has only made more certain the reliability of the Scriptures, whose authors wrote not simply their own opinions, but rather the very words the Holy Spirit drove them to write. 

And coming from that doctrinal mountain top—ambiguity absolutely intended—we find that the truth of the Word is subject to twisting, to distortion. There are those who will inevitably turn the truth of God into a lie—and Peter wants his readers to be alert so as to recognize and reject them. In the first three verses of this second chapter, he tells us how we can recognize them. 

Expectation 

Peter notes that even as the OT prophets were being driven along to write the truth, there were simultaneously false prophets, those who claimed to speak from God but did not—who opposed the true prophets and sought to discourage God’s people from listening to them. In the very same way, we can expect false prophets to arise today (2P 2.1)—and even “among” us, that is, within the very church. These teachers claim to be our fellow believers. 

Commentator Warren Wiersbe notes, “False teaching from within the church is far more dangerous than persecution from without (see Acts 20:28–32). Persecution has always cleansed and strengthened the church; false teaching weakens the church and ruins its testimony.” 

It’s certainly coming, and it can do a lot of damage. 

So how do we recognize these people? 

Recognition 

Peter points out three common marks of false teachers, things we can watch for as warning signs. 

First, they reject God’s authority, “denying the Lord that bought them” (2P 2.1b). The word Lord here is despotes, from which our word despot comes. In Greek it doesn’t necessarily involve cruel abuse of authority as it usually does in English, but it does speak of absolute authority, of dominion, of sovereignty. How foolish is it to reject the authority of one who is completely in charge? of one who owns you, having bought you? 

It’s often noted that sin makes a person stupid. Here’s an example. They “bring in damnable [destructive] heresies,” and logically but ironically, when they do, “they bring upon themselves swift destruction” (2P 2.1). Same root. Proper payment for parallel behavior. 

Next, they entrap others in “their pernicious [shameful] ways” (2P 2.2). This word in the NT often refers to immoral sexual practices. False teachers are like that—and they provoke onlookers to speak evil of [blaspheme] the truth that they claim to represent. 

We live in a time when a broad spectrum of religious leaders has been caught in immorality. Peter doesn’t say that all such people are false teachers—sometimes God’s people stumble into sin—but he does say that false teachers are often sexually immoral and thereby encourage others to follow in that path. 

Enough soft-pedaling. Enough excuses. Such people are disqualified from ministry. We shouldn’t listen to them. 

There’s a third characteristic of false teachers: they’re in it for what they can get out of it—and out of you. “And through covetousness shall they with feigned [plastos] words make merchandise of you” (2P 2.3). Again Weirsbe comments, “The false teachers use our vocabulary, but they do not use our dictionary.” 

Do you recall Peter’s statement that he had not followed “cunningly devised fables” (2P 1.16) when he preached to them? Well, these false teachers have. 

The airwaves are full of preachers who flaunt their lavish lifestyles and encourage their followers to send a “seed gift,” with the clear implication, or even the direct statement, that God will pour out greater (monetary!) blessings on them as a reward. 

Nonsense. 

In Africa I have often seen posters advertising mass meetings for “healing” and “blessing,” picturing preachers from America, or Europe, or indigenous Africans. Crowds throng to these meetings, and they have been doing so for decades. It astonishes me that so few of them seem to realize that they’re not any richer than they were last year, or five years ago. 

False teaching is a powerful thing. 

Next: what’s down the road for these false teachers. 

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Last time we established from Peter’s wordplay at the end of chapter 1 that the writers of Scripture were not just writing down their own thoughts and opinions; they were being driven along, like a ship in a storm, by the Holy Spirit, so they wrote what he wanted them to. 

But there’s more to say about that. Hence I’ve chosen to pause our progress through 2 Peter for a little excursus on the systematic theological topic of the inspiration of Scripture. 

The writers wrote what the Spirit directed them to write. But they were not stenographers. (As though anybody these days even knows what a stenographer is.) They were taking part in the process. 

To begin with, they did their own research. Most famously Luke, at the beginning of his Gospel, informs his correspondent, Theophilus, that he had read the other Gospels and wanted to provide his own perspective (Lk 1.1-4). We know that the OT prophets sometimes pulled in existing historical documents to clarify their writings; for example, Isaiah cites 2 Kings 18 as his Chapter 36—and the Chronicler, centuries later, cites the same passage as 2 Chronicles 32. Further, the biblical writers, both OT and NT, routinely cite extrabiblical writings and even secular writings; Joshua (Jos 10.13) and Samuel (2S 1.18) both cite the Book of Jasher, and the writer of Esther (probably Mordecai?) consults the official archives of the Persian Empire (Es 10.2). 

(By the way, I find the whole topic of biblical citations really fascinating, though I’m sure others may not. Maybe there’s a post coming on that one of these days.) 

So the authors are contributing, by their research, to their own understanding in the process of being “driven” to write the Spirit’s words. 

They’re also drawing from their life experiences. In relating Jesus’ teaching about a camel going through the eye of a needle, both Matthew and Mark use the Greek word for a simple sewing needle (rhaphis, Mt 19.24, Mk 10.25), the kind found in every Jewish home in that day. Luke, however, uses a different word, for a surgical needle (belones, Lk 18.25)—because, obviously, he was thinking as a physician (Co 4.14) should think, and that’s the Greek word that came to his mind when he thought, “Needle.” 

Let me pause here to anticipate a concern. Which word did Jesus use? And thus which Gospel author used the wrong word? That’s a sensible question, but misinformed. Jesus was almost certainly speaking Aramaic, and the Gospel writers were translating in their heads as they were recalling and writing. Their word choices differed because their life experiences differed—and their thinking thus influenced the words they wrote. 

One of my favorite illustrations of the cooperation of the authors and the Spirit in the writing of Scripture is in Paul, in 1 Corinthians. He begins his letter by expressing his concern over the cliques, the factions, that have developed in the Corinthian church: some follow Paul, and others follow Apollos (apparently the church’s first pastor after Paul’s founding of it, Ac 18.27), and others follow Peter (Cephas), and yet others follow Christ—as though he were merely a mascot rather than the Head of the church (1Co 1.12). Paul will have none of this; he asks rhetorically, “Was Paul crucified for you?!” (1Co 1.13). He follows that up by saying, “I thank God that I baptized none of you, but Crispus and Gaius” (1Co 1.14). 

Now, he has not written the truth here. I can imagine him pausing to think: “Oh, yes, I baptized the household of Stephanus … and I don’t remember whether I baptized anybody else” (1Co 1.16). 

You can see his mind working there, can’t you? 

He writes—eventually—what the Spirit wants him to write, but again, he’s not a stenographer; he’s actively taking part in the composition process. 

There’s a lot we don’t understand about inspiration, but what we do know is fascinating. And we do know that the Scripture is, as Peter writes, a “sure word of prophecy” (2P 1.19). 

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If our spiritual growth comes through knowledge of God, where do we get that knowledge? Peter now points us toward the only reliable source of information about God—what he has revealed about himself. 

In Peter’s day the Apostles were still living, and they were those to whom the Spirit was uniquely given to recall Jesus’ teaching perfectly and relay it inerrantly (Jn 14.26). So Peter points his readers first to this unique authority while it was still available. He says he’s going to be diligent to follow Christ’s command by reporting to them what the Savior has said, and to do so repeatedly (2P 1.12-13), through whatever time he has left (2P 1.14); and even after that, he leaves them these letters to keep their memory fresh (2P 1.15). 

Did Peter know that he was writing Scripture? Good question. Not everything the apostles wrote was inspired and preserved by God (1Co 5.9), and even though what they preached was protected from error (1Th 2.13), it wasn’t all preserved as Scripture either. So Peter writes with authority and assumes inerrancy, whether or not he realizes that God will preserve this particular epistle. 

As evidence of his Spirit-empowered accuracy of recall, he gives his readers a glimpse of the Transfiguration, the event that Matthew, in his Gospel, places at the center and the summit of his account of Jesus’ role as Messiah (Mt 17.1-8). Peter’s account is of course consistent with Matthew’s (2P 1.16-18); while the Spirit could have given Matthew, who was not at the Transfiguration, an accurate record of the event without need of consultation with eyewitnesses, there’s no reason Matthew couldn’t have received his knowledge of it directly from James, or John, or even Peter. 

And now Peter turns to the Scripture more formally. It’s clear that when Peter, or any other New Testament writer, refers to “the Scripture,” he’s thinking of the Hebrew Scripture, what we call the Old Testament. He calls it a “more sure word of prophecy”—more sure, apparently, than Peter’s own Spirit-empowered recollection of his own personal experience with Jesus. 

But there’s disagreement about what this statement means. If you’ll consult several English translations, as I often recommend that my students do, you’ll note some differences in meaning: 

• KJV: “We have a more sure word of prophecy.” 
  
• NASB 95: “We have the prophetic word made more sure.” 
  
• ESV: “We have the prophetic word more fully confirmed.” 
  
• CSB: “We … have the prophetic word strongly confirmed.” 
  
• NIV: “We … have the prophetic message as something completely reliable.” 

I see two different shades of meaning here: 

• The Scripture is more reliable than personal experience (KJV). 
  
• Peter’s experience at the Transfiguration confirms the accuracy of OT Scripture (modern versions). 

The Greek reads literally, “We have more secure the prophetic word.” I think either nuance is possible, and in the end the significance is essentially the same: We can count on the Scripture to be accurate, whether or not Peter is claiming that his experience increases his (and our) confidence. 

Peter ends this section with one of the two classic NT statements of inspiration. The writers of the Hebrew Scripture, he says, weren’t just jotting down their own thoughts (2P 1.20); rather, they were being blown along by the Holy Wind (2P 1.21). 

That wording may surprise you. I’m not suggesting that Peter is not writing about the Holy Spirit here. But there is a wordplay in his mind that adds depth to our understanding of the biblical doctrine of inspiration. 

In Greek, as in Hebrew, the word spirit can also mean wind or breath; context tells the reader how it’s being used. Here Peter uses a verb—moved (Greek phero)—that is used commonly elsewhere to speak of carrying, and a few times of the wind propelling a sailing ship. In fact, Luke uses it of the great storm, the “nor-easter” (Ac 27.14), that drove Paul’s ship across the Mediterranean before depositing it, with no loss of life, in a bay on the island of Malta. “We let her drive [lit. giving over, we were carried]” (Ac 27.15); “and so were driven [lit. thus they were being carried]” (Ac 27.17). 

That’s quite an illustration. 

The writers of OT Scripture were not writing down just whatever they thought; they were driven by the wind of the Spirit to write what he wanted them to write. 

I’m out of space here, and this doctrine requires more complete explanation. So in the next post we’ll have more to say about the biblical evidence on how the Spirit and the biblical authors worked together to produce the Scripture. 

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Part 1: Intro 

It’s not clear from Peter’s introduction (2P 1.1-2) that he’s writing to the same group of believers identified at the beginning of the earlier epistle, but as we noted in the previous post, most interpreters assume that when Peter calls this letter “this second epistle” (2P 3.1), he’s referencing 1 Peter as the “first” one. 

Peter’s first statement in the body of the epistle is truly astonishing. God, he says, “has given [perfect tense] unto us all things that pertain unto life and godliness” (2P 1.3). Everything you need to live as a believer, and to grow in that spiritual life, is already in your hands; he’s given it to you. 

How? “Through the knowledge of him that hath called us to glory and virtue.” In the New Testament, “calling” is attributed simply to “God” or to “the Lord”; it’s not said to be done by any particular person of the Godhead. So I’d suggest that the key to spiritual growth is simply knowledge of God—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. How do we develop that? That’s for the next post. 

God has not merely set us up for success with his initial gift of “all things that pertain unto life and godliness”; he is in this for the long run, and he is going to see us through to successful completion. Peter says he has “given unto us exceeding great and precious promises” (2P 1.4), by which we “might be partakers of the divine nature.” I must confess that this is beyond my comprehension. We are, of course, in the image of God and have been from the beginning (Ge 1.26-27), but this is clearly deeper than that, being limited to those whom God has called. In any case, that nature empowers us to “escape the corruption that is in the world through lust.” 

So. We’re now in a position, by God’s grace, to win the battle against our ongoing sinful nature. We don’t have to sin. 

Peter now lists character qualities that we are responsible to steward (2P 1.5-7). There is much here, more than a blog post can even begin to plumb. For this passage I strongly suggest my colleague Jim Berg’s Essential Virtues, a careful and thorough discussion. 

To summarize, what Peter lists here is not so much a ladder to climb, one character quality at a time, but a panoply of virtues, all to be developed coordinately, just as a soldier gains skill in multiple weapons at once.  

Note the importance of our role in this process. This isn’t about doing good works to achieve salvation; it’s about those who have spiritual life, by the regenerating work of the Spirit, drawing on the grace of God to develop spiritual muscles for a lifetime of (successful) battle with the world, the flesh, and the devil. If you do that, Peter says, you will bear spiritual fruit (2P 1.8). 

By contrast, he adds, there are those who do not steward these graces well (2P 1.9). 

Who are these people? Are they “carnal Christians”? Are they pretenders who hang out in churches but do not have spiritual life? Are they genuine believers but in danger of losing their salvation? 

The passage gives us some clues. Peter begins by saying that such a person has “forgotten that he was purged from his old sins” (2P 1.9). That seems to say that he has indeed undergone forgiveness at some point. 

So is he a “carnal Christian” or someone in danger of losing his salvation? Again, Peter helps us with the answer. If you “give diligence to make your calling and election sure,” he says, you will never fall. 

Now, I have Arminian friends, and I count them my brothers. I think of particular cases where their visible devotion to God and his ways exceeds my own, in spite of all I can do. But I do believe Peter rules out here the possibility of a genuine believer’s ending up in perdition. 

But Peter is also not contemplating a believer who, over the long haul, bears little to no fruit. Jesus himself rules that out in his illustration of the vine and the branches (Jn 15.1-10). Living things grow, and spiritual growth is expected of those with spiritual life. 

And what a life it is!—culminating in “an entrance … into the everlasting kingdom of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ” (2P 1.11). 

Oh, wonderful and bountiful supply! 

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Since I’ve just completed a series on 1 Peter, I’m inclined to keep going down the path to 2 Peter. Having always liked matched sets, I feel almost compelled to finish this one. 

And already I’ve waded into a controversy. 

By calling these two epistles a set, I have implied that Peter wrote them both. In academia these days, that view will evoke scorn from a certain (significant) group of New Testament scholars, who find the evidence that Peter wrote this second epistle completely lacking. In recent decades, however, an increasing number of (conservative) NT scholars are convinced of Petrine authorship, and I count myself as one of them. I won’t go into the arguments here, but I find them thoroughly convincing. For purposes of this blog, I’m effectively going to assume that Peter is the author (because he is). For the insufferably curious, here’s a brief summary of the issues by a qualified NT scholar posted on a careful and reliable website; for a more detailed (and excellent) look at the evidence and arguments, see Michael Green’s volume in the Tyndale Commentary series. 

Relevant to the “set” talk is my title for this series. The series on 1 Peter was “A Denier Redirected,” a title that could also make sense, obviously, for 2 Peter; in fact, the two epistles could be a single series. But to be honest, as the earlier series progressed, I found the title and subtitles increasingly unwieldy, and I’m inclined to let them go gently into the good night. So this one I’m calling “2 Peter,” and I’m not expecting a Pulitzer Prize for the title’s creativity. (No sense in even trying; the Puritans have clobbered everybody on that score.) These days I’m much more interested in focusing on the content. 

2 Peter is noticeably different from 1 Peter. The style and vocabulary are quite different; that’s an argument (though not a very good one, in my opinion) often raised against Peter as the author. The subjects are different as well—as would be expected in a separate epistle, even one written to the same audience. We see diversity of subjects in the Thessalonian epistles and the Corinthian epistles as well, and there’s little doubt among scholars that Paul wrote all four of those. 

We’re pretty sure that 2 Peter was written after 1 Peter. That may seem like a “Well, duh!” observation, but in fact there are legitimate questions about the order, for example, of the Thessalonian epistles; some think that 1 Thessalonians is first simply because it’s longer. In the case of Peter’s epistles, however, Peter refers to 2 Peter as “this second epistle” (2P 3.1)—and while we can’t be certain that his reference there is to the letter we know as 1 Peter, that option makes the most sense and works well. 

So why does Peter write a second epistle to the Christian Jews scattered from Israel across central and northern Turkey (to use the modern name) (1P 1.1)? You’ll recall that in the first epistle he emphasized the theme of submission in a context of suffering, applying it to every area of the culture: the state, the workplace, the home, and the church. What does he emphasize now? 

In this shorter epistle, he begins by noting two ways in which God has graciously supplied our needs: in sanctification, or spiritual growth (2P 1.3-15), and in the Word (2P 1.16-21). Then, having established a basis for truth, he turns to the problem that apparently motivated him to write: false teachers (2P 2.1-22).  We’ll note when we get there that this chapter is quite similar to the little epistle of Jude, the Lord’s half-brother. (I think Jude was written later, and pretty much everybody disagrees with me. I’ll give my reason when we get there.) The final chapter focuses on the coming Day of the LORD, a topic undoubtedly spurred by the discussion of false teachers. This is a word of encouragement: the false teachers do not win, for God wins in the end, and the enemies of truth will be defeated. 

Peter, as we would expect, packs a powerful punch. This small epistle is filled with warning, supply, and encouragement. 

Next time: the journey begins. 

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Peter notes two more ways we share our lives with the other members of the church. 

Share the Authority 

The New Testament lays out a governmental system, an authority structure, for the church. It has two kinds of officers: pastors (also called elders or overseers, 1P 5.1-3; cf Ac 20.17, 28), and deacons (Php 1.1). Here Peter addresses himself to the elders, giving them two commands: feed the flock (through teaching and preaching, of course), and take oversight (that’s the Greek word episkopeo, which is obviously the root of our word episcopal). The latter is what we call “administration”—organizing and seeing that everything necessary gets done. I should note that this doesn’t mean that the pastor should do everything. 

But Peter places some moderating concepts, some restrictions, on the elders: first, they should not be forced into the job; they should serve willingly (1P 5.2), nor should they serve just for their own financial profit, but because they wish to serve the church genuinely. And second, they should not “lord it over” the flock but should lead by example (1P 5.3). 

This is a tall order. A godly pastor will say with Paul, “Who is sufficient for these things?” (2Co 2.16). But by the grace of God, thousands of pastors have cared for their flocks in just such a way. The aberrations get a lot of attention, of course, but I would suggest that they get that attention just because they are deviants; the good ones simply serve, and they have a reward coming (1P 5.4). 

The sheep get some instruction from Peter as well—and it’s no surprise: he returns to his primary theme of submission (1P 5.5). And we submit not just to the elders, but to everyone around us in the body as well. Again, Peter agrees with Paul on this point (Ep 5.21). 

Share the Mission 

Finally, Peter climaxes his theme of submission by pointing us to the fact that all of us are “under the mighty hand of God” (1P 5.6). Our reaction to that truth demonstrates the relative health of our relationship with God: if we see that statement as threatening, then our understanding of and relationship with our Father is defective. There is no safer place than under the strong arm of a loving Father. 

What is a healthy response? Well, first, we leave the big decisions to him: we humble ourselves before him (1P 5.6), and we trust him to do the right things and to bring us out at a good place (1P 5.7). He does, after all, care for us—both emotionally and practically. 

With that background, we can face the enemy with confidence. We do have an enemy, one whose intentions for us are deeply evil. Being careless in such a situation makes no sense at all. So we take him seriously (1P 5.8), but we face him confidently (“in faith,” 1P 5.9). Not only are we all in this together, but Peter has already established that we have a caring Father with a mighty arm. 

And finally, a healthy response to our Father’s mighty arm is to look for his provision and reward. His unfailing grace certainly will, as John Newton famously observed, “lead me home.” After temporary suffering, God will mature us, bring us to our telos, take us all the way to his lovingly planned end (1P 5.10). And his grace is “eternal” (1P 5.10), “forever and ever. Amen.” (1P 5.11). 

British lyricist Michael Perry captures the concept perfectly: 

And whether our tomorrows be filled with good or ill, 
We’ll triumph through our sorrows and rise to bless you still— 
To marvel at your beauty and glory in your ways 
And make a joyful duty our sacrifice of praise. 

May we all—all—know such a life. 

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Peter has applied his fundamental principle—submission—in the social sphere (government and marketplace) and inside the home. Now he turns to the third arena in which we play out our lives: the church. As it’s often said, we’re called to be in the world, but not of it (cf. Jn 17.11-16), and of course we’re called to prioritize our family. But we are also part of a not-this-world, and another family, which is the family of believers. The Bible calls that the church, the assembled ones. 

Peter begins with the observation that “the end of all things is at hand” (1P 4.7). This is not the ranting of some wild-eyed prophet with a sandwich board; it’s the studied observation of an apostle, passing along what he has heard from Jesus himself. In the biblical history, the church is the result and manifestation of Christ’s climactic work of atonement and resurrection, and it is the outworking of his people’s abundant life that will persist unto the very end of time (Mt 16.18). Ever since the church began at Pentecost, it has been the final stage of God’s temporal plan. 

So we ought to pay attention (“be sober,” 1P 4.7) to the most important things, and we ought to get busy. 

Get busy with what? 

I’d suggest that Peter lays out before this spiritual family several ways in which we can share our standing before God as we await the end of all things. 

Share the Gifts 

Peter is the only New Testament author besides Paul to address the subject of spiritual gifts, and his mention is by far the briefest. Since I’ve written elsewhere on the topic, I’ll move quickly here. 

Peter starts with love (KJV “charity,” Greek agape), as well he should (1Co 13.13), and he elevates it with the phrase “above all things” (1P 4.8). We need to love one another. 

And now follows one way that we demonstrate that love. We show hospitality (lit. “love [phile] of foreigners”) without holding back (1P 4.9). What do you need? OK, here it is. For free. As much as you need. 

And whatever other gift or gifts we have, we exercise them for the benefit of the others in the body (1P 4.10). That’s what they’re for. 

Here Peter names two more gifts—or, I would suggest, two categories into which all the gifts may be organized—namely, speaking and serving (KJV “ministering”) (1P 4.11). Platform, front-of-the-room gifts, and those that work outside of the limelight and typically get little notice. 

When we do that, we edify the church as a whole (cf. Ep 4.12-13), and we bring glory to the church’s head, Christ (Ep 1.22-23). 

Share the Suffering 

Jesus never preached Prosperity Theology. He did say that our needs will be met—fowls of the air, and lilies of the field, and all that (Mt 6.25-34)—but he also said that we would be persecuted: his words about sparrows falling and the hairs on our heads being numbered were spoken in a context of persecution: “I send you forth as sheep in the midst of wolves” (Mt 10.16; cf 17-33). 

So Peter counsels, “Think it not strange concerning the fiery trial which is to try you” (1P 4.12). 

It’s coming. 

So how should we respond? 

Based just on verse 12, we ought to respond with confidence. We’re not shocked; we’re not surprised; we’re not wondering what has gone terribly wrong and why God has allowed this awful thing to happen to us. We square our shoulders, we face the persecutors, and we do not quake. 

Further, we respond with joy (1P 4.13-14). Since Peter knows that’s an odd request, he gives us the reason for it: our joy reflects confidence and trust in God, and the fact that he is worthy of that trust speaks well of him—it glorifies him, or gives his reputation more weight in our eyes, as well as in the eyes of the persecutors (if they have any sense). 

Third, we share the suffering innocently (1P 4.15). We don’t behave in ways that justify the persecution. These days I’m seeing Christians post things—snide, inciteful (not insightful), hateful things—that can result only in giving the enemies of God reason to blaspheme. Peter seems to imply that such people deserve whatever persecution they get. 

We respond with gratitude for our safe standing in God (1P 4.16-18) and with trust in the God who has given us that standing (1P 4.19). 

That doesn’t remove the pain, but it does make sense of it. And it puzzles the persecutors in the healthiest of ways. 

Next time: two more ways we share our lives with the rest of the body, the church.

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Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 

I’ve suggested that the historical background is significant here—that Peter is dealing with a situation where lots of marriages have been shaken up by the conversion of just one spouse. But that view raises a question. 

Should all husbands and wives treat each other this way, even if it’s not a religiously mixed marriage? Is Peter’s commandment here more broadly applicable? 

I find it ridiculous to argue that this is a narrow command. Shouldn’t every husband study his wife so as to know her well, thereby indicating that he sees her as valuable? Shouldn’t he want to be able to pray effectively? Shouldn’t every wife have internal character? Shouldn’t her beauty be more than skin deep? Shouldn’t she respect her husband, even as he honors her? 

Of course. 

Having addressed the husbands and wives, Peter extends his focus by considering what submission looks like in general (1P 3.8-12) and then laying out some consequences of the good conscience that such submission produces (1P 3.13-4.6). 

What does submission look like generally? How is it done? 

It starts in the mind (1P 3.8). We care about others; we empathize, we respect. And that mindset leads to certain actions (1P 3.9-11). We don’t seek revenge (because submission isn’t about us); we control our words; we pursue good and peace, not evil and its resultant conflict. And when we do that, sometimes to our great surprise, we find that we “love life, and see good days” (1P 3.10); and like that husband who treasures his wife, we find that our prayers are effective (1P 3.12). 

This is the kind of thinking and behavior that leads to a good conscience. Peter now lays out four long-term consequences of that. 

First, as he’s noted earlier (1P 2.15), good behavior shames those who seek to persecute God’s people (1P 3.13-17). Even if they go on to persecute you anyway, you have the benefit of a clear conscience and confidence in God’s overseeing providence. 

Next, it honors the sacrifice of Christ (1P 3.18-4.2). Again, as Peter has noted earlier (1P 2.21), Christ has suffered unjustly, and when we do also, we are merely following his example and demonstrating our willingness and intention to do so. 

Now, in this paragraph, there are two “difficult” passages. In New Testament Studies it’s a widely amusing irony that Peter says there are things in Paul’s writings that are difficult to understand (2P 3.16), when Peter himself has three of the most difficult statements in all the New Testament—two in this paragraph, and one in the next one. 

A blog post is not the place to explore these difficult passages in detail. A good technical commentary will usually give the arguments on both sides. For our purposes, I’m just going to state my position and leave it at that. 

When Noah was building the ark, he preached to his neighbors, but they did not heed his message—a message that was actually directly from God the Son, who would later suffer and die to rescue sinners, just as Noah was seeking to do with his message and his boat (1P 3.19-20). Good intentions, but the response was persecution—so why should we expect otherwise? 

Just as Noah’s boat was saved by water—lifted up on the waves of the Flood—so our baptism, our confession of our conversion—issues in our state of having a good conscience—though it does not wash away our sins, for only repentance and faith can do that (1P 3.21). 

After Christ was persecuted, God vindicated him through resurrection and exaltation. We, too, can look forward to our own vindication. And given the magnitude of Christ’s sacrifice, we should persist in turning from sin and protecting a good conscience despite the opposition (1P 4.1-2). 

Third, a good conscience delivers us from the fear of judgment (1P 4.3-6). Those who persecute believers are in the same state we once were in, and it makes no sense for us to allow their persecution to pressure us to rejoin them and thereby lie under threat of judgment. Just as God has delivered us, so he has also revealed himself in the past to those who have since died (here’s Peter’s third interpretational difficulty in just two paragraphs), thereby giving them opportunity to repent. He takes no pleasure in the death of the wicked (Ezk 18.23, 32). 

Next time, we’ll look at Peter’s roadmap for submission in a third arena: the church.

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Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 

Peter continues his theme—living out our great salvation through submission—by continuing to zoom in on the arenas where we choose to submit. He began with the king and other government officials; then he moved to the workplace. Now he makes it really personal: he brings it home. 

In a similar passage in Ephesians 5-6, Paul speaks to three parties in the home: wives, husbands, and children. Here Peter addresses just the first two. Like Paul, he speaks to the wives first. 

Given his theme, we’re not surprised by what he commands of wives; “Be in subjection to your own husbands” (1P 3.1). Like the command to submit to rulers and to masters / employers—even the “froward” (1P 2.18)—this one is hard to take. I’ll note that in Peter’s day, when the church was just in its infancy, there were lots of marriages in which both parties were unbelievers, and then one of the two was converted—and just like that, you have lots of “mixed marriages,” where one party cannot comprehend what’s going on in the mind of his or her spouse. Few if any of Peter’s readers had had the opportunity to be raised in a Christian home and marry another believer. 

So here we are. The wife—it’s often the women who are converted first—is a believer and now apparently an enemy of the state. The typical response of the husband is going to be shock, then ongoing concern, then frustration at his wife’s intransigence.  

Marital crisis. 

Peter counsels wisely. Don’t add to the difficulty of the situation, he says. Don’t make this personal. The offense of the cross is enough. Be as cooperative as the Scripture allows. 

We’ve already noted that in faceoffs with the state, Peter himself has refused submission when the state’s directives contradict the Scripture and the commands of Christ. Of course the same applies here. 

But this patient cooperation with the frustrated, unbelieving husband has a higher purpose than just peace in the home, as important as that is. The wife’s calm cooperation is likely to surprise the husband by contrasting sharply with his own behavior—and that, Peter says, is how you win your husband. 

Peter intensifies the effect of this submission by extending it to the heart. To women in a society where appearances meant everything, he says, give attention to the inner person as well as the outer embellishment. Make your beauty about more than your clothes and your hair (1P 3.3). His words remind us of Solomon’s remark about a woman without character, who is like beautiful jewelry in a pig’s snout (Pr 11.22). 

Some Christians take this passage literally as forbidding decorative hairstyles or jewelry or attractive clothing on women. Although I respect their view and their seriousness about honoring the Lord, I doubt their interpretation and application, for a couple of reasons. First, Peter forbids not extravagant clothing, but “putting on of apparel,” which would be, well, impractical. Women ought to wear clothes. Second, given the objective of reaching the husband graciously, it seems to me that looking less attractive in his eyes would be counterproductive. 

Peter strengthens his argument by citing a scriptural example. The women in the Hebrew Scriptures conducted themselves in this way, respecting their husbands (1P 3.5)—specifically Sarah, who called Abraham “my lord” (1P 3.6; cf Ge 18.12). 

This is the way. 

Like Paul, Peter is not laying burdens on the women without speaking also to the men. Husbands, he says, are to “dwell with [their wives] according to knowledge” (1P 3.7). In cases where the husband is a believer, and the wife is not, the husband is responsible to understand his wife and deal with this disagreement wisely. That means he has to pay attention to her; in fact, it means that he must already have been paying attention to her, so he can anticipate her concerns and address them in ways that she will not consider threatening. In doing that, Peter says, he is honoring her—he is treating her as a valued entity. 

Peter adds another benefit to the husband’s care for his unbelieving wife: “that your prayers be not hindered” (1P 3.7). How about that. It turns out that underestimating the value of your wife—both her mind and her outer adornment—will make your prayers ineffective. 

Yikes. 

Next time: are these commands just for “mixed marriages,” or are they more broadly applicable? 

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