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

 

Retired Bible Professor,

Bob Jones University

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Worth It, Part 2: The Greatest Consequences

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Part 1: The Greatest Cause

It shouldn’t surprise us that a plan devised by the triune Godhead should have unequaled consequences. Peter lays out a series of these in the ensuing verses in 1Peter 1.

Great Mercy

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, which according to his abundant mercy hath begotten us again unto a lively hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead (1P 1.3).

Peter’s opening salvo is that the Father has, and has demonstrated, “abundant mercy.” In biblical terms, mercy is typically the withholding of deserved punishment. In the face of our brokenness and consequent rebellion, God has chosen not to demand from us the negative consequences that our rebellion so richly deserves. Instead of death—the appropriate consequence of sin—God has opted to give us life, new life, abundant life, eternal life. He has called out to millions of long-dead and putrid Lazaruses, “Come forth!”—and we have been born again, able to see and hear and taste and smell and touch the spiritual realities with which we have always been surrounded but to which we were completely insensitive. This is a great mercy indeed.

Great Confidence

The same verse identifies the next consequence: hope. As Bible teachers have often said, biblical hope is not a feeble, unfounded wish; it is the confident anticipation of something that is certainly coming. By raising his Son from the dead, the Father has demonstrated the certainty of our resurrection as well, giving us firm confidence in his promise and joyous anticipation of its coming.

And what a day that will be, when millions of the dead are reunited with their reconstituted bodies and raised, never to die again.

Great Inheritance

To an inheritance incorruptible, and undefiled, and that fadeth not away, reserved in heaven for you (1P 1.4).

To our astonishment God has not only withheld deserved punishment (mercy); he has poured out undeserved blessings and benefits (grace). Not only have we been delivered from hell, but we have been promised an inheritance—unimagined wealth from our infinitely wealthy Father.

Peter uses three adjectives to describe this inheritance, all of them negations: incorruptible, undefiled, unfading. An inheritance that’s incorruptible can’t die or decay; one that’s undefiled can’t be soiled; one that’s unfading can’t wilt like a cut flower. This inheritance is for good, in every sense of the word.

You add an inheritance like that to the confidence that it will certainly come, and you really have something significant.

Great Protection

Who are kept by the power of God through faith unto salvation ready to be revealed in the last time (1P 1.5).

Now Peter adds to the certainty by noting that we are being looked after by God himself, infinitely powerful, to ensure that we arrive at this inheritance. This word “kept” is a military word, used of a watchguard, a group of soldiers assigned to keep something secure. Paul uses it of the guard that was placed on Damascus to keep him from escaping (2Co 11.32). As we know, he did escape, being lowered over the wall in a basket in the middle of the night (2Co 11.33). Soldiers are not omniscient, and they don’t see everything. But God is not like that; he knows, he sees, and so he protects perfectly. If you are a believer, my friend, you will be kept; you will receive your inheritance when the earthly journey is complete.

It’s worth noting that in the previous verse Peter has told us that our inheritance is “reserved in heaven for [us].” That means that our Father, whose power is infinite, is watching both ends of this situation; he’s guarding the inheritance that’s waiting for us, and he’s guarding us as well, to see that we get where we’re going. This calls for great confidence.

Peter’s just getting started. More on this next time.

Part 3: Another Greatest Consequence | Part 4: The Greatest Cost | Part 5: Making It Worth It

Photo by Jose P. Ortiz on Unsplash

It’s Worth It, Part 1: The Greatest Cause

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Life can be hard.

It’s harder for some people than for others, of course. I’ve been privileged to grow up in a country that’s relatively free, in areas of that country (the Northwest, New England, and post-Jim Crow South Carolina) that have been untouched by violent upheaval. My early years were in the middle class—lower middle class, certainly, but we always had a place to live and food to eat and clothes to wear.

David expressed frustration that “the wicked” seemed to have easier lives than God’s people (Ps 37, 73). I wonder whether he was just noticing those “wicked” who indeed had easier lives, and not taking into account the many “wicked” whose lives were utterly miserable.

In our day, and particularly in the US, it’s hard to make the case that believers as a group have a harder go of it than non-Christians do. I’ve written on that before.

But it’s also true that following Jesus does cost something; Jesus taught that principle himself (Lk 14.25-33). Of the biblical passages that address the problem of “suffering for Jesus,” none is more explicit or encouraging than Peter’s first epistle. Though I’ve written a series on a portion of that book as well, I’d like to look at a different portion and talk about a different lesson from the letter.

The pervading theme of 1 Peter is suffering, and specifically suffering because of one’s obedience to Jesus. Peter matter-of-factly reports the fact of suffering and then applies it in the three institutional spheres of life: the state (1P 2.13-20), the home (1P 3.1-12), and the church (1P 5.1-11).

In the first chapter he spells out the reasons why this hardship is worth it. He begins with the primary cause of the suffering: we as God’s people have been called to live for him (1P 1.2).

  • We have been chosen by the foreknowledge (or, more likely, foreordination; the same Greek word occurs in 1P 1.20) of God the Father—which choosing occurred, Paul tells us elsewhere, even before the foundation of the world (Ep 1.4).
  • We have been set apart by the Holy Spirit as God’s own special people, what Peter calls in the next chapter (1P 2.9) God’s “peculiar people” (KJV) or “a people for [God’s] own possession” (NASB // ESV).
  • We have been sprinkled—cleansed—with the very blood of Christ, at the cost of his own life. Peter’s use of the term “sprinkling” is theologically and culturally significant; the Mosaic Covenant was ratified with Israel by the sprinkling of the blood of the burnt offerings on the altar and then on the people themselves, as evidence that they were part of the Covenant (Ex 24.3-8). Peter, then, is clearly tying the death of Christ to the Mosaic Covenant and identifying his audience as participants in the New Covenant.

We are the objects, then, of the greatest work possible: a united and certain plan of the entire Godhead to form a covenant relationship with his people. This is much greater than my life circumstances, or yours, or those of all of us put together, and it is a worthy investment of our time and resources, regardless of the personal cost to us.

And that is not abusive, because it is consensual. We come to Christ willingly, and we determine that the cost of discipleship is a price worth paying.

Let me spend a few lines on a related issue.

We do not come to Christ simply because it’s a wise investment for us, because the payback is so much greater than the cost—and it truly is. If this is our primary motivation, then we are worshiping ourselves and not God; we are transacting business with God because it’s in our own best interests.

No.

We come to God because we should, because he is our Creator, because he is our Redeemer, because he is our Life and our Hope and our Goal. We live for him because he deserves it. We live for him as an acknowledgement of his greatness, his glory, and his right.

Next time, we’ll look further into Peter’s reasons that suffering for Christ is worth it.

Part 2: The Greatest Consequences | Part 3: Another Greatest Consequence | Part 4: The Greatest Cost | Part 5: Making It Worth It

Photo by Jose P. Ortiz on Unsplash

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

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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 2.11-12).

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.

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

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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

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

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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

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

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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

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

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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

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It’s Not Martyrdom If You’re Being Obnoxious

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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.

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