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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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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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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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Part 1 | Part 2 

Now that Peter has established the greatness of our salvation—both because it is God’s work, and because it has completely changed us—he turns to the “so what?” question, to application. How then should we live? How do people whom God has completely changed live in the world, among people whom he has not changed? 

The answer to this question will take up the rest of Peter’s letter. 

He begins with the overarching principle: don’t live like the unchanged. Abstain from fleshly lusts (1P 2.11). Behave yourself excellently, in such a way that even people who want to say bad things about you will have to slander you to do it (1P 2.12). 

What does that look like? Peter begins this section with a single imperative verb—one that we’re going to find driving the lifestyle choices for the rest of the epistle. 

“Submit,” he says (1P 2.13). And for the rest of this chapter, he’s going to focus on how we live in society: in reference to the state (1P 2.13-17), and in reference to our jobs (1P 2.18-20). 

Our lifestyle before the state, the government, is to submit—to do what they say. And “they,” Peter specifies, includes both the guy at the top, the king, and lower-level functionaries, governors (1P 2.13-14). Why should we do that? Well, because God wants us to, and he has an outcome in mind: we can “put to silence the ignorance of foolish men” (1P 2.15). 

In Peter’s day, the locals suspected Christians of being disloyal to Rome because they would not offer a sacrifice to Caesar or call him lord. Because they would not sacrifice to the Roman gods, they were called “atheists.” Peters calls that ignorance and foolishness, and of course he’s right. But how do we disarm the haters? 

Not the way a lot of Christians are acting today. You behave yourself. You do what the leaders say. Now, in our political system, the leaders tell us what to do through laws. And Peter says, you submit. You show a cooperative spirit. You obey the law. 

Now, of course, Peter himself disobeyed authoritative orders when they contradicted the direct command of God (Ac 4.15-22). And we have legal ways to resist ungodly laws. But we do so, Peter says, in ways that evidence goodwill and the desire to respect governmental authority, whether it represents our party or that of the other guys. 

Peter adds one more thought. Our interaction with the government should be genuine, not as a cover for secret disobedience (1P 2.16). We treat everyone with respect, as in the image of God (1P 2.17). 

Now Peter extends the principle to our jobs. We respond to the boss just as we do to civil authorities: we do what we’re told, and respectfully—and even if he’s unreasonable (1P 2.18). We endure injustice, and we find favor with God (1P 2.19-20)—who, it can be observed, has suffered the greatest injustice of all. 

Peter closes the chapter with a summary statement. In these relationships, we follow the example of Christ, who bore that greatest injustice and did so without responding to his revilers in kind. He never “owned the libtards.” He simply entrusted himself to the God who judges righteously and does all things well (1P 2.23). 

And it was this controlled and trusting action that accomplished our salvation—that accomplished all those great effects we’ve read about in chapter 1. 

Our submission to unjust authorities is not going to accomplish anything near that level; the cross work of Christ is unique in the history of the universe. But by giving our maltreaters a picture of Christ, we may well introduce them to him and make them fellow beneficiaries of his work. And the consequences for them will be every bit as eternal as the work of Christ himself. 

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Part 1 

In his first chapter, Peter has been focusing on the greatness of our salvation. After asserting its greatness outright, he advances his first evidence of its greatness: its source in the Triune God and in his Word. 

As he begins chapter 2, he continues this discussion by focusing on the effect of our salvation. 

I’d suggest that the first effect is implied rather than asserted; Peter exhorts his readers to turn from the old ways (1P 2.1) and pursue the Word—the great source that he has just been discussing—in order to grow in this new thing, this salvation (1P 2.2). The implication, of course, is that salvation empowers us to change, to reject the old ways—or as Paul terms this, the “old man” (Ro 6.6; Ep 4.22)—so as to live under the goodness (1P 2.3) of God himself. 

Then he turns to more explicit effects. 

The first two are astounding. God has taken a bunch of sinners, enemies, and turned them, metaphorically speaking, into building blocks in a temple—and second, into priests (to mix his metaphor in a way that expands it and highlights its astounding nature) who offer sacrifices  that are acceptable to God. 

From enemies to priests, welcome in God’s presence and pleasing to him. 

A complete transformation. 

Our forerunner, Christ, is both priest and sacrifice; we are both temple and priest. 

The third effect is no less impressive: because we believe in Christ, the “chief cornerstone” in the temple of which we are a part, we “shall not be confounded” (1P 2.6). We have assurance and confidence because our faith is solidly grounded in the unshakeable Christ. 

A part of this confidence is that our cornerstone will stand against all attackers and in fact will be an offensive weapon, a stone that makes his enemies stumble in defeat (1P 2.7-8). 

The fourth effect, in contrast to the assured defeat of God’s enemies, is our new standing in Christ. Peter has already noted that we’re priests who offer acceptable sacrifices, and here he repeats that idea, but he extends it as well: we are “a chosen generation (race), a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people of his own possession” (1P 2.9). 

There’s much to note here. First, God has given us as a group an identity, just as he did to Abram’s descendants in his great covenant with him. We are, as it were, a spiritual ethnicity; we are a family.  

Secondly, he mentions the priesthood again, but he ornaments it significantly; we’re not just a priesthood, but a royal priesthood. 

We skim over those words without realizing how significant that expression was in biblical times. In Israel, it was impossible to be both king and priest; the kings were from Judah, and the priests were from Levi, and never the twain would meet. King Uzziah tried to usurp the priestly duty of burning incense in the temple—he was the Queen Elizabeth II of his day, having ruled for well over half a century—and he was struck with lifelong leprosy for his trouble (2Ch 26.18-19). 

Two generations before Judah or Levi even existed, Melchizedek, the Jebusite priest of the Most High God, was both king and priest (Ge 14.18), but he was in a unique priestly order, available by special appointment only. Christ, we’re told, is ordained a priest after the order of Melchizedek (Ps 110.4; He 5.10). And now, we find, we are kings and priests as well. 

Remarkable privilege. Remarkable consequence of a divine work. 

The next label on us is “a holy nation.” In the same sense in which we are a spiritual ethnicity parallel to Abram’s descendants, so we are a divinely constituted nation parallel to Israel’s standing at Sinai. Since Abram they had been a people; now, under Moses, they are a nation. 

And so are we. 

The fourth label is “a people of his own possession” (KJV “a peculiar people”). We’re not just a people and a nation; we are a different kind of people, a special people, a people that belong particularly to God. We’re his fine china, set aside in a special china cabinet, one in which he takes great pleasure. 

“Mine,” he says. 

Peter finds a fifth effect of our great salvation. We have been brought out of darkness, he says, and placed in the light (1P 2.9). We can see. We can rejoice, in the same way we rejoice on a warm, sunny day after a cold, dark winter. The brightness in our minds and hearts elevates our spirits and enables us to proceed certainly, confidently, joyously. 

One more. We have obtained mercy (1P 2.10). Mercy withholds from us the terrible consequences that we justly deserve, and it frees us to live, to do, to thrive, without fear and without despair. 

What a great salvation. 

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We all know Peter, the disciple with the big mouth. The impulsive one. The one who made grandiose claims about his own loyalty, but hours later panicked and denied the Lord. The one who went out and wept bitterly. 

But Jesus is not like Peter. Days later, after cooking breakfast for his disciples on the shore of the Sea of Galilee (Jn 21.12), Jesus takes Peter aside for a walk on the beach (Jn 21.20) and redirects him from failure and shame to ministry. As Peter had denied him three times, Jesus tells him three times to “feed my sheep” (Jn 21.15-17). 

And boy, does he. He pronounces Jesus’ victory at Pentecost (Ac 2.14-36), and days later he faces down the Jewish Supreme Court, accusing them of having crucified the Messiah (Ac 4.5-12). And so begins a life of productive ministry. 

Decades later, as an old man about to face his own crucifixion for his faith, Peter writes a couple letters to churches in what we now call Turkey (1P 1.1). I’d like to take a few posts to work through what he says in the first one. 

He opens by attributing the work of our salvation to all three persons in the Triune God (1P 1.2)—and then, logically, turns to detail that astonishing work. 

He first exults in the greatness of its goal: “the end of your faith, even the salvation of your souls” (1P 1.9). We have received a confident anticipation, an expectation (KJV “a lively hope”), of good things to come: first, an inheritance, a future gift, that is “incorruptible, undefiled, and unfading” (1P 1.4). This promised inheritance will not—cannot—decay, become soiled, or lose its shine. It’s not fragile, like a rose. It will be there for us. 

But will we be there for it? Peter now describes a second good thing to come: protection, or preservation, or endurance. He says we “are kept by the power of God through faith unto salvation” (1P 1.5). This fact he has already implied in verse 4: our inheritance is “reserved in heaven for” us. 

Yes, we’ll make it. 

My Dad presented with dementia at age 85, and I was his caregiver for the last (almost) six years of his life. I watched his memory recede, decade by decade, until he no longer remembered even being in combat in World War II. He even regressed to before the time he was converted in his 40s; he started swearing again. That got me thinking. 

At his graveside service, I came to this passage. We are kept, Peter says, not by our own desperate grip on the Father, but by his almighty power, which is strong enough to preserve, protect, and defend us through whatever trials and obstacles we may face (1P 1.6-9). 

Now Peter turns to exult in the greatness of salvation’s source. He picks up his earlier reference to the Triune God and specifies the part each Person of the Godhead plays, beginning with the Spirit, who empowered the Hebrew prophets to predict a phenomenon they couldn’t understand even as they wrote about it: that the Son would suffer—and die—before he was glorified as Savior and King (1P 1.10-12). Then he praises the Father, the Judge, who planned our redemption (1P 1.17-18) and resurrected and glorified the Son (1P 1.21), and the Son, who accomplished it (1P 1.18-20). 

All of this empowers and motivates us to respond in holiness and obedience (1P 1.13-16, 22). We are infinitely out of our depth. 

Peter exults in another source: the Word of God, his communication to us through the inspiring work of the Spirit. This Word, like our inheritance, is “incorruptible” (1P 1.23) and unfading (1P 1.24). It, too, is not like the fragile rose. 

So here we stand, informed by the Word of God, and saved and kept by the power of God. 

Yes, indeed, we’ll make it. 

Next time: we, too, like Peter, are radically redirected. 

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