Dan Olinger

"If the Bible is true, then none of our fears are legitimate, none of our frustrations are permanent, and none of our opposition is significant."

Dan Olinger

Chair, Division of Biblical Studies & Theology,

Bob Jones University

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What Peter Learned in the High Priest’s Palace, Part 5: Witness

April 20, 2023 by Dan Olinger

Part 1: Introduction | Part 2: Growth | Part 3: Sacrifice | Part 4: Praise

Peter has one more principle to share from his painful failure in the high priest’s palace.

11 Dearly beloved, I beseech you as strangers and pilgrims, abstain from fleshly lusts, which war against the soul; 12 Having your conversation honest among the Gentiles: that, whereas they speak against you as evildoers, they may by your good works, which they shall behold, glorify God in the day of visitation (1P 11-12).

If we’ve been altered so radically by God’s selection of us, it ought to make a difference in our thinking, our outlook (and thus even our facial expressions!), our decisions, our day-to-day behavior. Peter has already stated as much in verse 9. Moving from darkness to light certainly changes the way you see things.

But here he restates the contrast between the old and new life, and then he draws yet another consequence of that change.

His emphasis here turns from what God has done to and for us, to what we ought to do in response. Here comes an imperative: abstain. The object he chooses is “fleshly lusts,” which includes a lot more things than we typically envision. When we hear the word lusts, we immediately think of sexual lusts—which this term definitely includes—but really it envelops any of our inclinations that are primarily for our own benefit; fleshly doesn’t have to mean physical. Paul uses the word flesh frequently for anything related to “the old man,” the former way of life. I don’t think it unlikely that Peter might have picked up that use of the word as well.

In the old days, he says, we used to make our choices based simply on our own self-interest. (And here his mind could well have gone back to that fateful night in the high priest’s palace.) Now, he says, we act in God’s best interest.

And that means acting in the interest of others as well: we “have our conversation honest” (“conduct honorable” ESV) or live honestly in our interaction with others. We don’t take advantage of them; we don’t deceive them; we don’t speak critically of them; we don’t take actions that lower their value or interfere with their progress toward worthy goals. (Yeah, after I finish writing this post, I really, really need to go mow my lawn. It’s lowering the property values of the whole neighborhood.)

And what happens when we live out among our neighbors the changes that God has made in us?

They “behold.” They see. They notice. This word see is the word for an eyewitness in a legal case. The eyewitness reports what he has seen; he testifies to the validity of the evidence. Just as DNA evidence is proof positive of identification, so also God has placed in us his DNA, if I may say so, and the evidence of his work in us should be indisputable. We are evidence in the court of history. Are we convincing?

Note that others do notice, despite their predisposition to reject us; though “they speak evil against you as unbelievers,” they still notice. And Peter says that they will respond to the genuineness they see: they will “glorify God.”

Does this mean that they will come to Christ because of what they have seen? or merely that they will be forced, despite their unbelief, to bow the knee to him at the end of it all? I’m not sure; it could involve either. I would certainly prefer the former, but we know that final submission will come to all (Ro 14.11; Php 2.10-11).

Peter says that our observers will glorify God “in the day of visitation.” When is that? Well, the phrase literally means “the day of oversight [or overseeing],” and that could mean a lot of things. Maybe it’s the day when they come to conversion—that’s certainly a day when they would glorify God. Or maybe it’s the day of judgment, when every knee shall bow.

But in any case, God will be glorified, and some of that glorification will be the direct result of the good work he has done in us.

Peter learned a lot in that palace. He was changed, painfully, from someone who was interested only in promoting his own agenda and benefit to someone who called himself a “servant” of Jesus Christ (2P 1.1), the very one he had betrayed. May we be changed as well.

Photo by Joshua Earle on Unsplash

Filed Under: Bible, Theology Tagged With: 1Peter, New Testament, sanctification, soteriology, systematic theology

What Peter Learned in the High Priest’s Palace, Part 4: Praise

April 17, 2023 by Dan Olinger

Part 1: Introduction | Part 2: Growth | Part 3: Sacrifice

Peter turns now to a deeper meditation on what God has done to us, and for us. He writes,

But ye are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, an holy nation, a peculiar people; that ye should shew forth the praises of him who hath called you out of darkness into his marvellous light (1P 2.9).

There’s a lot to consider here.

Peter has listed 4 different labels, we might say, delineating 4 statuses that God has bestowed on his people. Each one of them is worth a look.

  • We’re a chosen generation.
    • Some modern translations ues the word race or people. I don’t much use the word race anymore, because it doesn’t have any agreed-upon meaning among sociologists and thus doesn’t typically contribute any clarity to a conversation. The Greek word here is genos, which speaks essentially of a group of relatives, large or small, or of beings with a shared characteristic or interest. It’s the word Moses uses in Genesis (in the Greek translation, at least) that’s translated “kind” in the creation account.
    • So what’s Peter saying? God has chosen us, His people, to be of a certain kind, distinct from others, but united by his choice. We know from elsewhere in Scripture that he didn’t choose us because we were inherently different from others; it is our relationship to him that has now distinguished us.
  • We’re a royal priesthood.
    • We should note here that in Israel it was impossible for one person to be both a king and a priest. The king had to be from the tribe of Judah, and the priests had to be from Levi, and specifically from Aaron. Even Jesus was not qualified to be an Aaronic priest—and so the author of Hebrews notes that he was appointed by the Father to be a priest in a different order, that of Melchizedek—which, as the author notes, is a superior order to that of Levi (He 7.1-17).
    • So it is a special privilege for us, like our elder brother Christ, to be both kings and priests.
  • We’re a peculiar people.
    • I’m using the familiar wording of the KJV here, but we all know that with the changes in the English language since 1611, peculiar doesn’t mean what it once did, with the result that this expression is, well, peculiar. The modern versions have mostly settled on the expression “a people for his own possession”; we might say “his own private property.”
    • So we belong especially to God. We are set aside for his enjoyment and use. He delights in us the way someone delights in his boat, say, or in his coin collection—but in fact far more than that, because his delights are greater than ours, and perfect.
  • We’re a holy nation.
    • This phrase combines a couple of earlier concepts. Holy speaks of the same kind of setting-apart that peculiar does, while nation speaks of the same kind of common identity that generation does.
    • But I think nation (ethnos) might carry a connotation a little different from genos. For one thing, I note that in Israel, the term was used for “the nations”—that is to say, the Gentiles. To Peter’s Jewish readers—and probably to Peter himself—this would have been a little uncomfortable at least. Is Peter saying that God is making a new nation, distinct from Israel? It would seem so. The ramifications of that concept have led to a good many theological arguments, which we won’t take time for here.

God has changed our status in all these ways—for what? Peter isolates a single purpose: “that we should show forth the praises of him.” NASB and ESV say “proclaim the excellencies.” Now, this isn’t saying that we ourselves should praise him, so much as that we should speak and live in such a way that others are moved to praise him. The excellencies of how he has changed us should incite wonder and worship in those who see us.

That’s a complete turnaround from the way Peter was thinking in the high priest’s palace. And it’s a radical change for us as well.

Part 5: Witness

Photo by Joshua Earle on Unsplash

Filed Under: Bible Tagged With: 1Peter, New Testament, sanctification, soteriology, systematic theology

What Peter Learned in the High Priest’s Palace, Part 3: Sacrifice

April 13, 2023 by Dan Olinger

Part 1: Introduction | Part 2: Growth

Peter learned something else the night he betrayed his Master. He writes,

You also, as living stones, are built up a spiritual house, a holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices, acceptable to God by Jesus Christ (1P 2.5).

The Scripture uses several metaphors for God’s people. We’re a body (Ro 12.4-5); we’re a kingdom (Re 1.6); we’re a bride (2Co 11.2). Here Peter says that we’re a temple. And individual believers are living stones who make up the temple, as well as being the priests who work in the temple. Peter’s point here isn’t that the stones are beautiful and that together they compose a beautiful building—though that is certainly true. His emphasis is more practical, purposeful, utilitarian than aesthetic. We are a temple, and priests in that temple, for the purpose of offering up sacrifices to God.

So, it turns out, following Jesus isn’t really about us.

Oh, there are benefits to us, of course: forgiveness, eternal life, love, joy, peace, fellowship—and on and on it goes. But it’s primarily about making sacrifices to the one who is ultimately great and good, to the one who planned and accomplished all those benefits that we have reaped. Our focus is on him, not our benefits.

Peter had bragged about his devotion and assured faithfulness. But when faced by public pressure—from a couple of servant girls—he collapsed. He was thinking entirely of his own felt needs—reputation and self-preservation, mostly—and abandoned “the Christ, the Son of the living God” (Mt 16.16) in his Master’s time of much greater need.

The way someone acts in a crisis tells him what his most primal needs are. Peter demonstrated that he cared more about himself than anyone else.

As do we all.

But with this new birth, this discarding of the old life for the new, this utter reversal of focus, we are called to count “but dung” (Php 3.8) our former fascination with ourselves, our needs, and our desires, and to give what we have, to sacrifice, to God.

That raises a question.

What can we give him? Why should he want our junky stuff? Of what use to him is rifling through our yard sales?

Good question.

Peter speaks to that. Our sacrifices, he says, “are acceptable to God by Jesus Christ” (1P 2.5).

How about that.

Our new life isn’t just a chance to start the same kind of life over again; it’s a different kind of life, and it’s a change of both nature and location.

We are, as Paul repeatedly says, “in Christ” (Ro 8.1; 12.5; 1Co 1.30; 2Co 5.17; Ga 3.28; Ep 2.13; Php 1.1; Co 1.2; 1Th 2.14; and elsewhere). And in Christ, the Father is well pleased (Mt 3.17). When we offer sacrifices to God, he sees them as coming from his Son, and he is delighted with them. When we “present [our] bodies a living sacrifice” (Ro 12.1), God accepts and treasures them.

The key here is not what is offered; Peter says we offer sacrifices (1P 2.5), but he doesn’t seem to have any interest in specifying what it is that we offer. The key, I think, is that we offer at all. In the high priest’s palace, Peter wasn’t thinking about Jesus’ benefit; he was thinking merely of himself. That night he learned that our decisions, because we are followers of Christ, need to be focused on him. What will please him? What will advance his kingdom? What will further his purposes? What will enhance his reputation?

In human relationships, we know that the real value of a gift is not in the gift itself; it’s in the fact that it’s given. It indicates that we were thinking about the person to whom we gave it. Our thinking is oriented toward that person.

There you have it. In this new life, Peter says, we live as oriented toward God and not toward ourselves.

So, unlike Peter, we make sacrifices. In the face of public scorn, we point to heaven and say, “I’m with Him.” We take a stand.

No waffling. No hesitation. No regrets.

Part 4: Praise | Part 5: Witness

Photo by Joshua Earle on Unsplash

Filed Under: Bible, Theology Tagged With: 1Peter, New Testament, sanctification, soteriology, systematic theology

What Peter Learned in the High Priest’s Palace, Part 2: Growth

April 10, 2023 by Dan Olinger

Part 1: Introduction

Peter begins his second chapter by describing his audience as babies (1P 2.2).

That’s not normally a compliment; nowadays, when you call somebody a baby, you’re saying that he’s acting immaturely, selfishly. You’re saying he needs to grow up.

In some places, them’s fightin’ words.

Peter’s point, however, is not at all hostile or demeaning. He’s telling us something he learned through his failure.

When you come to Christ, you’re not just getting your sins forgiven and escaping from judgment; you’re starting a whole new life. This is happening in the spiritual sphere rather than the physical, but there are significant points of comparison between the two. When you first come to Jesus, you’re a spiritual baby, and like a physical baby, you desperately need to grow up spiritually. This isn’t an accusation; it’s a fact. We don’t denigrate babies for being babies; we nurture and protect them—and we feed them like crazy: all they want, whenever they want. We rearrange our lives around the baby’s hunger pangs.

If babies don’t grow, they die.

That’s true in botany as well as human development. Some people—we say they have a “green thumb”—can make plants grow seemingly without effort. Others—including yours truly—kill everything they touch. I once killed a barrel cactus.

Do you know how hard it is to kill a barrel cactus?

The growth principle is true in business too. You can’t just create a system and cash checks while the system hums along smoothly; you need to grow, constantly adapting to new market conditions. If you don’t, your competitors will eat you alive. (See under “Howard Johnson’s Restaurants.”)

Children know that they need to grow. They follow their advancing age a half a year at a time: “I’m not five; I’m five and a half.” They mark their advancing height on the closet door frame. They talk about what they’re going to do when they’re whatever age.

I recall when my daughter turned 6 and was allowed to go to the stage productions on campus. Her first one was an opera—Barber of Seville if I remember correctly—and when the overture started, she slid forward in her seat and hardly moved for the rest of the night. What a delight it was for her to experience growing up.

Children talk about it all the time: “When I grow up, I’m gonna … “ I’ve never gotten over that; I’ve enjoyed every year more than the one before.

We love to grow, to mature, to get better at things we enjoy. Growth is good.

One dark night Peter learned that in his life in Christ, he was a baby; he had a lot of growing to do.

What makes a baby grow?

Nutrition. Lots of it. He eats and eats and eats, and eats some more.

That’s how we grow spiritually as well; we need to eat spiritual food, as much as we can hold. So Peter says, “As newborn babies, crave the unadulterated milk of the Word” (1P 2.2). He has just observed that “the Word of the Lord endures forever” (1P 1.25); there’s no better or more powerful source of spiritual nutrition than that.

We need to feed hungrily on the Word, filling our minds and hearts with it, building spiritual muscle, gaining wisdom and experience, so we’re not likely to do the spiritual equivalent of running out into the street and getting hit by a car.

That’s pretty much what Peter did in the high priest’s palace.

But by the power of the Word, and the Spirit, Peter began a new life. Not a perfect one, by any means (see Galatians 2), but a generally healthy and productive one.

So how’s your growth going? How do those little pencil marks on the closet door frame look?

Part 3: Sacrifice | Part 4: Praise | Part 5: Witness

Photo by Joshua Earle on Unsplash

Filed Under: Bible, Theology Tagged With: 1Peter, New Testament, sanctification, soteriology, systematic theology

What Peter Learned in the High Priest’s Palace, Part 1: Introduction

April 6, 2023 by Dan Olinger

Among Bible students, Peter has become almost a stereotype of himself. We all feel like we know him: outspoken, impetuous, the bull in the china shop, lots of braggadocio with comparatively little accomplishment.

Some would say that’s the early Peter, before the Lord changed him at Pentecost. He famously went from “the fear of the Jews” (Jn 20.19) to facing down the Sanhedrin’s threats (Ac 4.5-20) and even to being soundly asleep in prison the night before his scheduled execution (Ac 12.1-7). That’s an astonishing change, not one to be sniffed at.

But then he disappoints us again, allowing the presence of Judaizers in Antioch to intimidate him into withdrawing fellowship from Gentile believers and apparently returning to Mosaic dietary restrictions (Ga 2.11-12)—and this after a vision from God (Ac 10.9-16) affirming what Jesus had taught during his earthly ministry: that all foods were now clean (Mk 7.19).

We can say confidently at least that during Jesus’ earthly ministry, Peter the coarse, tough fisherman indeed fit the stereotype. He was brimming with confidence, speaking out of turn (Mt 17.4), boasting of what he would accomplish (Mt 26.35), even rebuking his Master for a solemn pronouncement (Mt 16.22), and earning a greater rebuke in return (Mt 16.23)—and that shortly after proclaiming him “the Christ, the Son of the Living God” (Mt 16.16).

But as we know, his world came crashing down one dark night in Jerusalem. Despite his boasting (Mt 26.35), he did indeed deny his Master, not once, but three times (Mt 26.69-74)—and a threefold cord, the Preacher tells us, is not quickly broken (Ec 4.12). His denial of Jesus came from fear of a couple of servant girls (Mt 26.69-71). Crashing down, indeed; “he went out,” Matthew tells us, “and wept bitterly” (Mt 26.75).

A hard lesson in the high priest’s palace.

But the Lord has plans for Peter. After the resurrection the angel at the tomb makes special mention of Peter to the women: “Go your way, tell his disciples—and Peter—that he’s going before you into Galilee” (Mk 16.7). And in Galilee, while several of the disciples are fishing on the lake, the resurrected Jesus invites them to come join him for breakfast on the beach (Jn 21.12). After they eat, he invites Peter, and apparently only Peter (Jn 21.20), to go for a walk on the beach. In a tender conversation, he gently reminds Peter of his threefold failure of love (Jn 21.15-17), each time calling his failed disciple to return to service: “Feed my sheep.” And with a stronger threefold cord, not breakable at all, he binds up Peter’s spiritual wounds.

And then he tells him the greatest news of all: Peter is going to serve Jesus until the day he dies (Jn 21.18-19).

And he does. That service lasts a long time, more than three decades according to well-attested tradition. He stays in Jerusalem for some time, during which he faces down the Sanhedrin, as we’ve noted already (Ac 4.8ff); he miraculously establishes order in the Jerusalem church by exposing a lie (Ac 5.1-9); he exposes a false convert in Samaria, while also serving as the vehicle by which the Holy Spirit is given to the Samaritans (Ac 8.14-25); he raises a saint from the dead at Lydda (Ac 9.32-43); he brings the gospel to the first Gentile to believe (Ac 10.44-48); he survives an attempted execution (Ac 12.1-16); and he helps lay a solid foundation for the unification of Jews and Gentiles in the body of Christ by his biblical and theological contribution at the Council of Jerusalem (Ac 15.7ff). According to tradition, he helps start the church at Rome and ministers there.[1]

And later yet, after long service, he writes two letters to believers in what is today Turkey, to encourage them during persecution and to urge them to be faithful until the return of Christ.

In those letters, he leaves a written record of what he learned in the high priest’s palace.

For a few posts we’ll look at just a portion of one of those letters.


[1] Irenaeus (Against Heresies 3.1.1, 3.3.2, and 3.3.3), as well as several citations in Eusebius’s Church History, report this, along with others.

Part 2: Growth | Part 3: Sacrifice | Part 4: Praise | Part 5: Witness

Photo by Joshua Earle on Unsplash

Filed Under: Bible, Theology Tagged With: 1Peter, New Testament, sanctification, soteriology, systematic theology

It’s Not Martyrdom If You’re Being Obnoxious

July 15, 2021 by Dan Olinger

There’s a lot of talk about Christians being persecuted these days.

I’d suggest a couple of moderating thoughts.

First, if you’re talking about in the US, then, no, they’re not being persecuted, relatively speaking. There are some instances of their being harassed, and that’s wrong. I think the well-known case of the Colorado baker is a pretty clear instance of that. But harassment, while condemnable on both ethical and legal grounds, is nothing like the persecution faced by the early church, or by the modern church in many places of the world. I’ve been in some of those places, and when American Christians cry “persecution,” it strikes me as just as inappropriate as calling an ID requirement for voting “voter suppression.”

Second, there’s some biblical wisdom that we can apply profitably to the matter of either harassment or persecution. To begin with the really big picture, God has designed the universe so that in general it rewards wise behavior and punishes foolishness. If you respect physical laws by not putting your hand into a flame or stepping in front of a city bus, you’ll live more comfortably—and probably longer. If you acknowledge the fact that your fellow humans are created in the image of God and therefore worthy of respect, courtesy, and care, you’ll have fewer interpersonal problems. Even in its pre-fallen state, the world may well have carried the potential of causing you pain if you didn’t pay attention. I suspect that if pre-fallen Adam had beat his head against an Edenic tree trunk for a while, he’d have decided not to do that anymore.

And in its post-fallen state, the potential rises exponentially. Now the world is broken. Creation groans (Ro 8.22), giving us earthquakes and tornados and tsunamis and pandemics. And we, as part of the broken world, engage in thinking and behavior that rejects the good God and denies his image in those around us. That kind of mistreatment and perversion of the designed order causes unfathomable pain. As Jesus’ half-brother James noted, “What is the source of quarrels and conflicts among you? Is not the source your pleasures that wage war in your members? 2 You lust and do not have; so you commit murder. You are envious and cannot obtain; so you fight and quarrel” (Jam 4.1-2a).

All of this means that when Christians suffer, there are more possible reasons than just “suffering for Jesus.” Christians, individually or corporately, might be suffering because they’ve said or done stupid things, placing themselves under the divinely designed cosmic order, whereby life is tougher if you’re stupid (as John Wayne allegedly said). Or they might be suffering because they’ve engaged in sinful thinking or practices that have social or legal consequences.

I’m not making this up; the Bible actually warns God’s people against this very thing. Perhaps the most concentrated biblical teaching on Christian suffering is 1 Peter, which lays out the fact and causes of suffering and then applies it in the three major institutions of life: the home (1P 3.1-12), the state (1P 2.13-20), and the church (1P 4.7-5.11). As part of that instruction, Peter says,

14 If you are reviled for the name of Christ, you are blessed, because the Spirit of glory and of God rests on you. 15 Make sure that none of you suffers as a murderer, or thief, or evildoer, or a troublesome meddler; 16 but if anyone suffers as a Christian, he is not to be ashamed, but is to glorify God in this name (1P 4.14-16).

If you’re going to suffer—which is likely, he says—then suffer for a good reason. There’s no spiritual profit in suffering in itself—everybody suffers for one reason or another. So don’t suffer for stupid reasons.

Peter lists four behaviors here. Two of them are the specific sins—crimes, in fact—of murder and theft. The third item is a general term for evildoing. The fourth is a bit of a puzzle, what New Testament scholar Thomas Schreiner calls “one of the most difficult interpretive problems in the New Testament.” Because it’s a rare word, we don’t have much basis from usage for assigning it a meaning. Etymologically it’s “overseeing the affairs of others,” but what that means in a negative context isn’t clear. I’m inclined to read it as “being meddlesome,” “sticking your nose into other people’s business.”

Big sins will bring you trouble. So will little ones. I’d suggest that commenting on every passing social media post, whether or not you have any idea what you’re talking about, will bring you trouble. I’d also suggest that approaching people with a hostile attitude and confrontational speech will bring you trouble. And I’d suggest, finally, that blaming Jesus for your trouble in those cases is just wrong.

Photo by engin akyurt on Unsplash

Filed Under: Bible, Culture, Politics Tagged With: 1Peter, New Testament, persecution