Healed By His Wounds - 1 Peter 2:24-25

Audio available here (the first few minutes were accidentally not recorded)

The great Southern Baptist bible scholar, Dr. A. T. Roberston, once said, “It is pitiful to think how the Bible has been abused by men who did not know how to interpret it. Many a heresy has come from a misinterpretation of Scripture.” Heresy is serious business, and it always spiritually deadly. In some cases, it can be physically deadly as well. Take, for instance, the controversy that has surrounded the Followers of Christ Church in Oregon City, Oregon. Over the last few decades, the church came under suspicion when a medical examiner reported that 25 of the church’s children had died in a 10 year period due to lack of proper medical attention. An investigation discovered that 21 of 78 children buried in the church’s cemetery had died of easily diseases and disorders. Within the last few years, a wave of deaths and serious illnesses among the congregation’s children has brought them into the spotlight again. In 2008, a 15-month-old died from pneumonia; months later, a 16-year-old died from a bladder blockage; in 2009, a premature baby who was delivered without medical assistance died from infection. A few days ago, the parents of that child were indicted for manslaughter. About a week prior to that indictment, another couple in the church were charged with first-degree criminal mistreatment and had their 7-month-old child taken into state custody because the parents had not sought medical treatment for a growing mass of blood vessels that was developing on their daughter’s forehead threatening permanent blindness. How can one explain such a wave of tragedy among the children of a single congregation? In each case, these parents refused medical treatment for their children because the church taught that God would heal the children by faith, and medical care was severely frowned upon. In some cases, members of the church have been shunned for seeking medical care.

Members of that church follow a line of teaching that claims that physical healing is always to be expected from God, and when it is not received, it demonstrates a lack of faith on the part of the believer. You don’t have to go to Oregon to find that kind of unbiblical thinking (though you know what I say about those folks out west!). There are plenty of churches around us who teach the same things, and plenty of Christians we encounter almost daily who believe that if we only have strong enough faith, we will not experience sickness or any physical ailments. Of all the preachers on television, a vast majority of them regularly teach this. They say that genuine faith in Christ will always make one healthy, and also wealthy! And how does one demonstrate this kind of faith? Usually it is proven by sending monetary contributions to the preacher. One of the scriptures that is often used to validate this teaching is this statement from 1 Peter 2:24, “by His wounds you were healed.” This is paraphrased from Isaiah 53:5, that rich prophecy about the suffering of the Messiah which says, “by His scourging we are healed.” One of these teachers once claimed that he had not suffered flu in many years because, in his words, “I’m redeemed from the flu! … I’m healed by the stripes of Jesus.” Another even goes so far as to say, “The basic principle of the Christian life is to know that God put our sin, sickness, disease, sorrow, grief, and poverty on Jesus at Calvary.” Is that really the most basic principle of Christianity?

But do we not believe the Bible? We do indeed, every word of it. And does the Bible not say these things? Does it not say, “By His wounds you were healed?” It does, we see it in this very text. But in this case, as in so many other dangerous heresies, what has happened is that the words of Scripture have been removed from its context and twisted to mean something it never intended to say. We are all in need of healing, and in more ways than just physical. But the phrase we find here does not mean that we can expect an immediate physical healing from the maladies that plague our bodies. So, in what sense then can we say that we are healed by the wounds of Jesus?

I. We are healed from the disease of sin (v25)

It should come as no surprise to anyone here today when I say that we are all going to die. Of course, the only possible exception to that is that if any of us are alive when the Lord returns, and we don’t want to rule that out. But aside from that, we are all going to experience physical death. Now there are a growing number of folks today who seem convinced that this does not have to be so. They claim that with the right vitamins and supplements, diet and exercise, we can stay younger longer, and avoid death or at least postpone it indefinitely. Listen, folks, the Bible teaches us in many passages and with many words that death is inevitable for us. Consider, for example Hebrews 9:27, which says, “It is appointed for men to die once and after this comes judgment.” And there is no cheating death. The day of our death is an appointed time on God’s calendar. The Psalmist said, “In Your book were all written the days that were ordained for me,

when as yet there was not one of them” (Psalms 139:16). And we know the reason why we are all under this death sentence. It is because of sin. The entrance of sin into the world through Adam’s disobedience brought a terminal condition that has been passed on to each of his descendants. In our bodies, the wages of sin are at work, corrupting us from conception to the day of our death. And because we are sinners by nature, we are also sinners by practice. We aren’t called sinners because we sin; we sin because we are sinners.

Peter describes our sinful condition this way in verse 25: “You were continually straying like sheep.” This again borrows from Isaiah 53, where we read, “All of us like sheep have gone astray, each of us has turned to his own way.” Notice that it is not a one-time incident where we stepped off of the right path of life. We were continually straying, he says. It was the pattern of our lives to stray away from the Lord. We were not going His way, but as Isaiah said, “each of us has turned to his own way.” There may be some who would object and say, “Not me! I’ve always walked the straight and narrow. Been in church since the day I was born, and always did right.” First of all, just plainly speaking, that’s a lie; and lying is sin, so immediately you discover you aren’t as good as you thought. But even giving the benefit of the doubt, maybe you have always tried to do good, always been a church-going person who did good things. Remember what God said about Israel: “This people draws near to Me with their words and honors Me with their lip service, but they remove their hearts far from Me, and their reverence for Me consists of tradition learned by rote.” In other words, their religion was all talk and going through the motions. Their hearts were just as heavy laden with sin as the most irreligious people in the world. That kind of religious performance may fool some people, but it never fools God. He sees the heart. He sees what no one else can see and He watches when no one else is looking. None of us are immune to sin and its effects in our lives. And the most obvious effect is death.

Some of you have experienced the pain of raising a child who turns away from the path you have taught them to follow. You worked hard to provide for them, you taught them right from wrong, you instilled biblical truths in their lives from an early age, and they chose to stray from the path. You know how heartbreaking that is. That is why our hearts resonate so much with Jesus’ story of the Prodigal Son in the Gospel According to Luke. We can all identify with that story in some way. We either find ourselves in the loving parent or in the selfishly sinful son, or sometimes in both. But the story is not primarily one about childrearing. It is about humanity’s relationship with God. He created us all, and provided for us all, and cares for us all. But we have all “continually strayed.” As heartbreaking as that may be for human parents to endure, it is infinitely moreso for God, whose fatherly love has been trampled upon by every one of us in our sin.

Peter says here that in our straying we are like sheep. It’s not intended as a compliment. Sheep are notoriously stupid animals. They are prone to follow one another into deadly predicaments. A news story from 2005 illustrates the point well. In a small Turkish village, a herd of sheep was grazing near a cliff and one of them fell off the cliff. Suddenly, 1500 sheep followed it over the edge. The bad news is that 450 of them died. The good news is that the pile of dead sheep at the bottom of the cliff cushioned the fall of the other 1100 who survived the event. That’s pretty stupid, isn’t it? But we are like those sheep; we follow the herd. The first human-sheep, Adam, plunged into the death of sin, and the rest of us have followed him and one another right over the edge. And we will plummet to not only a physical death, but unless our sinful condition can be healed, there will be an eternal death to suffer at the end of the fall.

We are told here that we have been healed by the wounds of the Lord Jesus. The healing described both here in 1 Peter and in the Isaiah passage is not a healing from sickness, not immediately anyway, but a healing from sin. The context makes that clear. Nowhere in these verses have we read a single word about sickness, nor do we in Isaiah. Rather, surrounding this mention of healing we find repeated emphasis on sin; and in Isaiah, we find synonymous terms like transgressions and iniquities. And because this healing from sin is available to us, we can turn from the cliff’s edge before going over the edge.

This is the point of the concluding statement in the passage. “Now you have returned to the Shepherd and Guardian of your souls.” You remember how Jesus looked on the multitudes with compassion, seeing them “like sheep without a shepherd.” He looks upon humanity following after one another in sin, like those sheep leading one another astray over the edge of the cliff. But He is the Shepherd that we are wandering from. He said of Himself in John 10, “I am the Good Shepherd.” He is the Shepherd of whom David spoke in Psalm 23, saying, “The Lord is my Shepherd.” And because of the healing that He has provided for us, healing from our sins, we are able to return to His care. It is a picture of repentance, much like we see in the prodigal son story when he comes to the end of himself and runs home to his father’s embrace. So we come to the place when we are ready to receive His healing and we return, we repent, we turn from the path on which we are going astray, and turn to Him. He becomes for us the Shepherd that we need. The biblical word here is poimen, interestingly the same word that is translated as “Pastor” elsewhere in the New Testament. We come under His care. As the Psalmist says, we are the people of His pasture and the sheep of His hand (Psalm 95:7). And He is also the Guardian of our souls. The word used here is episkopos, another word used to describe human leaders in the church, namely the Bishop or Overseer. Jesus has become our spiritual guardian; our souls are under His guidance and protection. This relationship with Him begins as we turn from our wayward path of sin and receive the healing that He has provided for us.

Christ heals us from the disease of our sin. But a question remains unanswered: How is this healing possible? What took place to make this healing something we can experience? Verse 24 gives us the answer.

II. We are healed through the death of the Savior (v24)

A friend and I were trekking through villages in Kenya about 13 years ago, and we kept noticing all these kids with open sores all over their arms. My friend had this thought: “I wonder if Neosporin could help those sores?” So we pulled out our first aid kits and began applying Neosporin all over the kids hands and feet and faces, praying for each one as we did. And as we trekked through the villages day-by-day, the kids were showing us how their sores were healing up, and they were delighted. Parents were begging us to come and put the magic lotion on their children too. It wasn’t magic. It was just a little tube of Neosporin, and prayer (I think it was both), but it seemed to be the remedy. They had never seen or heard of Neosporin; we had never seen sores like those. And who knows how many kids we walked by we might have been able to help because we didn’t know we had the cure to their sores in our backpacks?

Well, Neosporin might be a wonder drug, but it won’t heal us of our greatest ailment – it is useless in dealing with sin. There is no medicine behind the pharmacist’s counter, no topical ointment or potion we can take; but there is a cure. The cure is not found in a pill but in a person – Jesus Christ.

In Zechariah 3:1-5, the prophet records a vision he had of Joshua the high priest standing before the angel of the LORD. Many scholars believe that this expression “the angel of the Lord” refers to the Second Person of the Trinity, Jesus in His preincarnate state. But Joshua is not alone there. Satan is standing there, ready to accuse him before the Lord of all his sins. And it doesn’t look good for Joshua. The Bible tells us there that “Joshua was clothed with filthy garments and standing before the angel.” This is a picture of each of us. We are standing before the Lord, covered in the foulness of our sins, with Satan accusing us before the righteous Judge of all that we have done to violate His commands and ordinances. Deserving only of wrath and hell, we stand justly condemned before the Lord. But suddenly, the scene takes an unexpected turn. The angel of the Lord says, “Remove the filthy garments from him. … See, I have taken your iniquity away from you and will clothe you with festal robes.” Joshua has his sin-stained garments taken away and is clothed in clean garments before the Lord. And this is a picture of what Christ has done for those who have been healed of their sins.

This is possible because “He Himself bore our sins.” Imagine we are standing before God and around our necks are hanging tablets that list all of our sins that we’ve ever committed. Not a one is left off. We know that we rightly deserve the wrath that we fear we will experience. But then imagine that Jesus comes to us and removes those indictments and places them around His own neck and then stands in our place to receive the divine wrath of the Father against all of our sins. That is the idea here when Peter says He bore our sins. The wording indicates He was placed under a heavy weight, the weight of our sin and the full judgment that our sin deserves. But it isn’t imaginary or just a mystical, spiritual event. It was a physical, historical event. He bore our sins, Peter says, “in His body.” His body took the scourging, the beating, the torture, the nails of execution, that our sins deserve.

Because of sin, we are all under a curse. And Christ has born our sin and their curse. The Law of Moses stated that a person who is hanged on a tree is accursed. The Apostle Paul understood that this ultimately pointed to Jesus, the beloved Son of the Father, who for our sake became accursed to heal us of our sin. In Galatians 3:13, Paul says, “Christ redeemed us from the curse of the Law, having become a curse for us—for it is written, ‘CURSED IS EVERYONE WHO HANGS ON A TREE.’” He “who knew no sin became sin for us,” as 2 Corinthians 5:21 says, so that sin might be fully and finally dealt with in His body on the cross. All of our indictments against all of our sins, are hung upon Christ; and Christ is hung upon the cross to suffer and die for our sins. Colossians 2:14 says it this way: “When you were dead in your transgressions and the uncircumcision of your flesh, He made you alive together with Him, having forgiven us all our transgressions, having canceled out the certificate of debt consisting of decrees against us, which was hostile to us; and He has taken it out of the way, having nailed it to the cross.”

The wounds Christ received in bearing our sins are the source of our healing from sin. By His wounds we are healed. Isaiah said “He was pierced through for our transgressions, He was crushed for our iniquities; The chastening for our well -being fell upon Him, and by His scourging we are healed. All of us like sheep have gone astray, each of us has turned to his own way; But the LORD has caused the iniquity of us all to fall on Him” (Isaiah 53:5-6). Christ bore our sins, He bore them in His body, He bore them on the cross, so that as a result of His suffering, we are healed.

Because of His suffering in our place as our substitute, we may now “die to sin and live to righteousness” as Peter says in verse 24. We demonstrate this spiritual reality every time a believer is baptized. He or she is buried in the water, depicted both the death of Christ for us and the death of our old way of living that was dominated by sin. Then the believer is raised up from the water, depicting both the resurrection of Christ and the raising up of a new life which is cleansed from sin, clothed in Christ’s righteousness, and empowered by the Holy Spirit to live a holy life. We are justified by faith in Christ, meaning that we have been declared righteous by God on the basis of Christ’s righteous life and substitutionary death; and we begin to experience sanctification as the Holy Spirit transforms us throughout the remainder of our lives, making us more like Jesus. Sin begins to loose its enchantment, and we develop a hunger and a thirst for righteousness. Every genuine believer in Christ should find this taking place in his or her life – a growing dissatisfaction with the emptiness of sin, and an increasing longing to live more and more by the Spirit’s power for the glory of God. Though in this life, we will continue to struggle with sin, and wrestle against its effects in our lives and in our world, the healing we have experienced is real. Christ died bearing our sin, that we might be reconciled to God forever. This is true healing.

We have been healed from the penalty of sin. Because of Christ’s death and resurrection, those who trust in Him as Lord and Savior will not receive the wrath of God against sin for Christ has borne it for us. We are being healed from the power of sin. As we grow in Christ, we find sin’s grasp weakening upon our lives, and we are finding more power from the Holy Spirit to say to no to sin, and to say no to ourselves and our sinful desires, and more power to say yes to the things of God. And one day, praise God, we will be fully and finally healed of all of sin’s presence. We long with all of creation for the day of complete redemption when every last effect of sin will be put away for eternity. On that day, when we arrive at our eternal home in heaven, we will be forever done with all sickness and suffering. Revelation 21:4 says of that place and time that “He will wipe away every tear from their eyes; and there will no longer be any death; there will no longer be any mourning, or crying, or pain; the first things have passed away.” Christ has brought us healing, and has struck the deadly disease that afflicts us all at the roots. Sin has been dealt with completely in His death and resurrection. The roots are withered. The leaves and fruit are still visible – suffering, weakness, sickness, death. But they are attached to a dead root, and will one day perish as well.

So, Christian, when you suffer, when you are sick, when you are weak, and when you stare death square in the face, don’t let anyone tell you that it is a sign of God’s displeasure with you. Don’t let anyone tell you that it is because of a lack of faith. If that were so, how can we explain the fact that Jesus, the beloved Son in Whom the Father is well-pleased, the One whose confident faith in the Father never wavered, suffered beyond anything we can comprehend, and died brutally and unjustly in our place? We accept by faith that because of what Christ has done for us, bearing our sins in His body on the cross, that our most life-threatening ailment, SIN, has been healed. And we accept by faith that though we will continue to sin and suffer in this life, a complete healing awaits in glory. And all of it, the spiritual healing and the physical healing are ours through Christ. He is our Shepherd, He is the Guardian of our souls, and we must entrust ourselves to His loving care through all of the hard days of this life, knowing that He is guiding us safely home through many dangers, toils and snares. But under His Lordship, we will arrive there, and our healing will be complete.

If you have never placed your faith in Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior, I pray you would see your own name written between the lines of these words in our text today. Christ bore YOUR sins in His body on the cross, so that YOU might die to sin and live to righteousness; for by His wounds YOU are healed. For YOU were continually straying like sheep, but now YOU have returned to the Shepherd and Guardian of YOUR soul. I pray it will be so. May the Spirit of God move upon your heart and draw you to turn from sin and trust in Jesus, who died for you that you might live for Him.

Following in His Steps - 1 Peter 2:21-23

Audio available here

The last half of the nineteenth century was a time of great evangelistic fervor. Crusades and revivals were taking place all over America with multitudes of people making decisions for Christ. A pastor in Topeka, Kansas around the turn of the twentieth century was noticing that in spite of all those who were claiming to believe in Christ, very few were actually following Christ in the way they lived. He began writing a series of semi-fictional stories about a pastor and his people that he read to his youth group every Sunday night. The entire church was excited and enthusiastic about what the pastor was sharing and they encouraged him to have the stories published. He sent the manuscript to three publishers, all of whom rejected it. His denominational newspaper began publishing the series, one chapter per month. It was so well-received that publishers took sudden interest in the story. Unfortunately, because the newspaper was not copyrighted, sixteen publishers issued editions of the book, and the author never received one cent of royalties. Hundreds of thousands of copies of the first edition were sold within a few weeks. By mid-century, it had outsold every book except the Bible. And in an interesting turn of events, during the early 1990s, the book experienced a sudden renewal of interest due to a little bracelet featuring four simple letters. This resurgence made the book one of the only books in the bestseller list in the first and last decades of the twentieth century. Today, it has sold over 30 million copies and ranks as the 39th best-selling book of all times. The book is called In His Steps, written by Charles Sheldon.

The book tells the story of Rev. Henry Maxwell and the church he serves in the fictional town of Raymond. The church is visited one Sunday by a homeless man who rises to speak to the congregation at the end of the worship service. He confronted the Christians about the lack of compassion that Christians had shown to the homeless and needy in the town. After speaking, he collapsed and died a few days later. The entire episode is a wake-up call to Rev. Maxwell, who then challenges his entire congregation to live the next year of their life by asking the simple question, “What would Jesus do?” The rest of the book features vignettes of how individuals are transformed by this question.

The popularity of this question, and its abbreviation WWJD, continues today among Christians. However, because of the growing biblical ignorance among those who profess to be Christians, the question is not easily answered in many lives. The question is asked, “What would Jesus do?,” but in many situations there is an embarrassing realization that individuals simply do not know what Jesus would do. The only way to rightly answer the question is to immerse ourselves in the Word of God and discover what, in fact, Jesus did do. And what we find on nearly every page of the New Testament is the sometimes startling reality that Jesus suffered. When we ask, “What would Jesus do?,” the answer we find in Scripture may not be what we want to hear. Near the book’s conclusion, Rev. Maxwell preaches,

“If our definition of being a Christian is simply to enjoy the privileges of worship, be generous at no expense to ourselves, have a good, easy time surrounded by pleasant friends and by comfortable things, live respectably, and at the same time avoid the world’s great stress of sin and trouble—if this is our definition of Christianity, surely we are a long way from following the steps of Him who trod the way with tears of anguish for a lost humanity.”

Think about Jesus’ first recorded words to Peter, the apostle who writes these words in our text today. In Matthew 4:19, Jesus called out to Peter and his brother Andrew, who were fishing at the time, and said, “Follow me.” This is the true meaning of discipleship. To be Christ’s disciple is to follow Him. It took Peter a long time to learn that Christ’s way was the way of suffering—it was the way of the cross. When Jesus began to tell His disciples that He was going to die, it was Peter who was the first to rebuke the Lord. When they came to arrest Jesus in Gethsemane, it was Peter who drew his sword to fight. Now, years later, we see that Peter has come to understand that suffering does not mean that we have wandered from the path of Christ, but rather that we are following Him upon that path. In fact, as we read Peter’s epistles, it seems as if suffering has become the center of all Christology in Peter’s mind. These verses, and continuing on to verse 25, form somewhat of an exposition of Isaiah 53, that rich passage of the Old Testament that prophesied of the Suffering Servant who was to come. When we hear or read that passage today, we instantly recognize that it is speaking of Jesus Christ. Interestingly, Peter is the only New Testament writer to specifically connect the Isaiah 53 prophecy to Jesus. Perhaps that passage had become precious to him as he contemplated all that he heard Christ say about suffering and all that he had seen Him endure.

The context in which these few verses is situated is all about suffering – unjust suffering for the sake of Christ. Then we come to verse 21 which says that we have been called for a specific purpose … to follow in Christ’s steps; to follow His example. The Greek word translated “example” in verse 21 refers to a practice of teaching children to write by giving them a pattern of letters to trace over. There were four Greek words which, together, contained every letter of the alphabet. These would be written lightly on paper, and a child would repeatedly trace over the form of the letters until they had mastered forming the letters. Here Peter says that Christ is our example. We are to study His life and practice bringing our lives into conformity with His as the Spirit performs His work of sanctification in us.

We might think that this discussion of Christ as our example marks a change in subject from that of suffering to that of happier thoughts. But as we see here, suffering is the way of Christ, and He has blazed a glowing trail through the vale of suffering upon which He calls all of His people to follow. There are a million ways to follow His example, to walk in His steps, but none of them travel far without encountering suffering. Many are willing to follow Him up to it; those who belong to Him by faith prove themselves by following Him all the way through it. Every human being will experience suffering in life. It is an inescapable reality of life in this world that is radically corrupted by sin. But some of us will follow Christ through suffering. And in order to know that we are doing that, we need to know something about His suffering. We need to find His footsteps on the path, and follow them. This passage shines the light on that path so we can step where Christ has stepped.

The first thing we learn in this text about Christ’s suffering is that …

I. Christ suffered unjustly (v21-22a)

Though it has been several years now, the memory is still fresh. I cannot drive past the restaurant beside of Toys R Us here on High Point Road without remembering the gang-related double murder that took place there in 2007. This past week, a federal jury sentenced 25 year old Alejandro Umana to receive the death penalty for those murders. An FBI agent said of the sentencing, “It proves our law enforcement partners are determined to bring those who break the law to justice, regardless of the obstacles that may block the path.”

Justice. It is a word that means receiving what we deserve. It means that there is a punishment that fits that crime. When wrongs are done without penalty, that is injustice. When someone is punished innocently, that is also injustice. Part of our being made in God’s image includes that we have some understanding of justice. We may fear it when we have done wrong, but deep down, we desire it for ourselves and others, and we feel a sense of satisfaction when justice is done. But then we look upon the cross where Jesus died and instantly we are aware that we are not seeing justice carried out. Here the death penalty is being carried out, not upon a murderer, but upon One whose entire life is encapsulated in these words from Matthew 9:35 – “Jesus was going through all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom, and healing every kind of disease and every kind of sickness.” For this, He was sentenced to death. This is not justice. This is injustice of the highest degree.

The Bible says that the wages of sin is death (Romans 6:23). This does not mean that every sin causes instantaneous death, though some do. It means that all death is the result of sin. This is obviously true in the case of murder – someone’s sin led to the victim’s death. It is plain to see in the case of a person who dies while driving drunk – their sin killed them. But what about in the case of a 91-year old faithful saint of God who loved the Lord, loved her family, and loved her church. Is sin the cause of her death? Yes. Because of sin’s effect on the human race, our bodies are susceptible to injury and disease; we are corruptible, and our bodies are constantly wearing-out to the point of death, throughout our entire lives. As Paul says in Romans 5:12, “Though one man sin entered into the world, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men, because all sinned.” We have a congenital birth defect that we inherited from Adam called “our sin nature,” and it is deadly.

But what about Jesus? In the first part of verse 22, Peter says of Christ that He “committed no sin.” Even Pilate, who ordered the crucifixion knew this. After examining Him, Pilate said, “I find no guilt in this man” (Luke 23:4). Not only did Jesus never commit any sin, He did not have a sin nature, as the rest of humanity does, because of His miraculous virgin birth. So, should He not have been exempt from dying? Indeed. But Jesus died unjustly. He did not get what He deserved on the cross. He suffered, Peter says in verse 21, for you. Jesus didn’t get what He deserved. He got what we deserve. In His death, He became our substitute. We may say that we never did anything to offend the Jewish religious authorities or the Roman Empire, so why would we deserve that? Well, that is not all that was going on in Jesus’ death. He was dying for the sins of humanity – including yours and mine. He was dying to bear the full wrath of God that our sins deserve. Romans 5:8 says, “God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.” And because He didn’t get what He deserved, you and I don’t have to get what we deserve. In becoming our substitute in death, Jesus bore the wrath for us so that we can be forgiven of our sins and covered in the righteousness of Jesus; because Christ suffered what He did not deserve, we receive abundant life in the power of His Spirit and eternal life in His glorious presence.

Jesus suffered unjustly, and we have been called to follow in His steps. This means that we who follow Him will also face unjust suffering. We will often suffer for things we have not done, we will often suffer for what others have done. We will face inconveniences and uncomfortable situations that do not benefit us at all, but are solely for the good of another. As Christ suffered for us, so we will suffer for Him. He bore the wrath of God for us; we will face the wrath of men for Him. Our suffering is not like Jesus’s suffering; we cannot provide salvation for another person because of our suffering. Only Christ could do that. But in our suffering, we will sometimes endure what ought to be borne by others; we will face what we do not necessarily deserve from men; but we do so in the knowledge that we will not face what we deserve from God. Christ bore that for us. As He willingly faced that unjust suffering, so we follow in His steps when we experience unjust suffering as well.

Secondly, we find in the text that …

II. Christ suffered silently (v22b-23a)

On the side of our sink, there is a sponge that we use to wash dishes and clean up messes around the kitchen. Ideally, whoever uses the sponge washes it out after it has been used and wrings it out so that it is clean and dry and ready for the next use. Ideally. As Donia will tell you, things don’t always happen ideally. Sometimes I just forget. I was in a hurry. There was milk spilled on the counter, and I wiped it up and forgot to clean and wring out the sponge. So the next time I grab the sponge, it is soggy and it smells very bad. This sort-of toxic ooze begins to drip from the sponge, and I do what every self-respecting man does in that situation. I say very accusingly, “Who used this sponge last?” Or I drop it in the trash can and say, “What happened to the sponge?” See, it is a funny thing about sponges. You really don’t know what is inside of one until you squeeze it. People are much the same. You find out what is inside of them when life squeezes them. And sometimes it isn’t pretty.

What comes out of us when life puts us under pressure? Grumbling? Lies? Complaining? Whining? Making excuses? Protesting? Fighting? All too often, I am ashamed to say that those things characterize my own response to suffering. But, I am called to follow in Christ’s footsteps through suffering. And what do we hear from Jesus in the midst of His suffering? Silence.

In the first part of verse 22, Peter says that Christ “committed no sin.” The rest of verses 22 and 23 explain the particulars of His sinlessness in response to His suffering. Notice that they all have to do with His speech, or better with His silence. Verse 22 says, “No deceit was found in His mouth.” Jesus was dragged before Pilate on the charge that He had blasphemed God and incited rebellion against Israel and Rome by claiming to be the King of the Jews. So when Pilate asked Him, “Are you the King of the Jews?” Jesus didn’t say, “Who Me? No way. I never said that! You got the wrong guy. You need to let me go!” No, there was no deceit in His mouth. He said very simply, “It is as you say.” And He said precious little else. Verse 23 says, “while being reviled, He did not revile (or speak abusively) in return; while suffering, He uttered no threats.” There was no grumbling, no complaining, no whining, no excuses, no protests. Jesus was living out what Isaiah had long before prophesied of Him: “He was oppressed and He was afflicted, yet He did not open His mouth; Like a lamb that is led to slaughter, and like a sheep that is silent before its shearers, so He did not open His mouth” (Isaiah 53:7).

Some of us have a real hard time with that don’t we? We seem unable to keep our mouths closed, and especially when things aren’t going well. James 3:2 says, “We all stumble in many ways. If anyone does not stumble in what he says, he is a perfect man, able to bridle the whole body as well.” In other words, the tongue is the most difficult part of our bodies to control. We sin in our speech more easily than in any other way. James says that the tongue is a restless evil and full of deadly poison (3:8). And at no time is this more evident than when things aren’t going our way. When we suffer, particularly when we suffer unjustly, we are tempted to complain incessantly, stretch the truth, speak evil of others, or offer insults and threats in return to those who oppose us. But these indicate that though we may have followed Jesus’ footsteps into suffering, we have abandoned His path in the midst of the suffering. If we were to follow Him through, we must not return evil for evil, or speak deceptively, slanderously, or harshly. Silence will sometimes be our best, albeit our most difficult, option in the midst of suffering. Any other response may only deepen the quagmire of our distress, and will definitely demonstrate us to have wandered away from following after our Christ who suffered silently.

Jesus’ silent suffering was not the silence of fatalistic or passive resignation, nor shall ours be. But rather, we see in the remainder of the text that Christ suffered silently because …

III. Christ suffered faithfully (v23b)

How could Jesus endure such unjust suffering in silence? It was not because He was a stoic who merely set His face like flint toward an unescapable fate. Rather, He walked through this suffering in patient confidence that His Father was in sovereign control of all things and was accomplishing His divine purposes through it all. Peter says here in verse 23 that, He “kept entrusting Himself to Him who judges righteously.” The Greek word here translated as entrusting has to do with “handing something over.” Interestingly, it is the same word used to describe how Judas “handed Jesus over” to the chief priests (Mark 14:10); how the Sanhedrin “handed Him over” to Pilate (Mark 15:1); how Pilate “handed him over” to the people’s will (Luke 23:25); and how he handed Jesus over to the soldiers for crucifixion (Mark 15:15). Jesus was being handed over from one authority to another as He endured His suffering, but all the while He was handing Himself over to a greater authority: not one that judged based on fear, people pleasing, personal protection, nationalistic concerns, but to One who judges righteously; One who is sovereign over all other authorities; One who is always in control and working to bring good to those whom He loves and glory to Himself. Jesus kept entrusting Himself to the Father in absolute confidence that His purposes would be fulfilled.

He suffered faithfully. His confidence in God’s sovereignty, God’s goodness, and God’s faithfulness never faltered. He knew that the Father had not disappeared, become unconcerned with His plight, become displeased with the Son or lost control of the situation. He handed Himself over to the Father in confident faith. O Christian, look down that path of your suffering and see the footprints that glow thereupon! They are not leading along the side roads of depression and despair, frustration and failure, anxiety and abandonment; they are leading us through suffering in confident faith. Christ example shows us that when, literally in His case, all hell breaks loose on earth, God is enthroned over it all, and is just as good and loving and faithful as He was in our most pleasant days. So walk on. We walk on in the assurance that we can depend on Him even in our most difficult days of suffering. Christ knew that His suffering was not the end. He had not wandered aimlessly into it; He was walking victoriously through it. And if we follow Him, we can embrace the cross of suffering, knowing that it meets on a path that leads to glory.

If we are following Christ, He is leading us on the way of the cross. For this reason, Dietrich Bonhoeffer said, “The cross is laid on every Christian. … the cross is not the terrible end to an otherwise godfearing and happy life, but it meets us at the beginning of our communion with Christ. When Christ calls a man, He bids him come and die. … Suffering, then,” Bonhoeffer said, “is the badge of true discipleship.” More recently, Karen Jobes has written, “One cannot step into the footsteps of Jesus and head off in any other direction than the direction He took, and His foosteps lead to the cross, through the grave, and onward to glory.” The apostle Paul put it this way in 2 Corinthians 4:17. “For momentary, light affliction is producing for us an eternal weight of glory far beyond all comparison.”

It maybe Crucifixion Friday now, all may be dark and painful. The cross we must bear for Christ may stand undeniably before you. But Resurrection Sunday is coming, and the footsteps of Christ lead us to it. Every year at Easter we sing Charles Wesley’s hymn, “Christ the Lord is Risen Today,” but the truths contained in that great hymn need to burn in our hearts every day. Particularly when we are suffering, it will help us to remember these words:

Soar we now where Christ hath led, Alleluia!

Following our exalted Head, Alleluia!

Made like Him, like Him we rise, Alleluia!

Ours the cross, the grave, the skies, Alleluia!

Suffering that Pleases God (1 Peter 2:18-20)

Audio can be downloaded or streamed from this link

I had a preaching professor once who said that if you preach on suffering, you will never lack an audience. Indeed, suffering seems to be one universal constant in the human experience. Suffering is our daily reminder that things are not right in this world. For this reason, skeptics and cynics will say that if there really was an all good, all powerful God, then there would not be all of this suffering. Since there is so much suffering, of such a great degree, and so seemingly unequal in its distribution, then God must not exist, or else He is not all good, or else He is not all powerful. If He exists, and if He is all good, He would want to eliminate suffering. If He could not, then He is not all powerful. So goes the argument known as “the problem of evil and suffering.” When asked why we believe in an all-good, all-powerful Creator, we will often say, “Look at the universe.” Interestingly, C. S. Lewis once admitted that when he was an atheist, if you had asked him why he didn’t believe, he would have responded, “Look at the universe we live in.” In his mind, the chaos and disorder, the suffering and the evil that existed in the world seemed to suggest that there was no god. But looking back on those days of unbelief many years later, Lewis said, “There was one question which I never dreamed of raising. … If the universe is so bad, or even half so bad, how on earth did human beings ever come to attribute it to the activity of a wise and good Creator?” Lewis said, “In a sense, (Christianity) creates, rather than solves the problem of pain, for pain would be no problem unless, side by side with our daily experience of this painful world, we had received what we think a good assurance that ultimate reality is righteous and loving.”

This is exactly what we claim isn’t it? That God is real, He is all-knowing and all-powerful, Jesus is Lord, and, yes, there is unimaginable suffering going on in the world. To some, this is an insurmountable paradox. But to those of who are the followers of Christ, these are the inescapable realities of life in a world corrupted by sin. Sin is at the root of suffering, and God has acted to kill the problem at the root through the death and resurrection of Christ. There is coming a day when we will live free of sin’s presence, and in that day we will also enjoy the absence of sin’s effects on our lives and on our society. Until that day, there will be suffering, because there will be sin, and much of that suffering will be seemingly unjust. God is not unconcerned with suffering, nor is He unable to do anything about suffering. God is sovereign over all that occurs in life, and He has a purpose in all suffering, even when we do not know what that purpose is. In some cases, God is able to bring glory to Himself through our suffering. In our text today, Peter addresses this very issue – suffering in such a way that God is glorified. Is it possible for God to pleased in our suffering? Because suffering is a result of sin, God is not pleased with the fact that we suffer, but as we will see in this text, it is possible for God to pleased with us in the midst of our suffering. Twice in this text we read concerning unjust suffering that “this finds favor with God.” We might recoil from the thought of our suffering finding favor with God, but the passage does not indicate that all suffering is pleasing to Him. There are certain occasions, however, when our suffering finds favor with him.

I. God is pleased when we suffer through difficult obedience (v18)

It does not escape our notice that the passage before us today is addressed primarily to “servants.” The term used here is not the general one used throughout the New Testament for those who serve others, but it is a specific term referring to the household slaves of the Roman world. By definition, slaves had no personal rights, and were viewed as the property of their masters. Some were treated well by their masters, while many were treated harshly. Underlying the treatment of slaves was the assumption that they were somehow less than human. Aristotle said that “a slave is a living tool,” while Varro, a Roman nobleman, wrote that the only thing distinguishing a slave from a beast or a cart was that the slave could talk. The writers of the New Testament did not see their task as revolutionaries, overturning social systems. Rather they understood that the gospel, rightly-applied, transforms individuals first, and transformed individuals change the world. Therefore, they never address the system, just the people inside the system. So, Peter, and elsewhere Paul, speaks to the Christian slaves instructing them to live out their Christian faith within the system of slavery. Several times in Paul’s letters, masters are addressed the same way: to treat their slaves as real people, and when they are believers in Christ, to treat them as brothers and sisters in the Lord. Over time, the institution of slavery in the ancient world was eventually revolutionized as Christians within the system were transformed by the power and the word of God. At the time Peter was writing, however, that transformation had not taken place. Many Christians found themselves enslaved to others, and some were treated better than others by their masters.

Peter’s words to these enslaved Christians is the same as it is to all people when it comes to the Christian perspective on authority. He exhorts them to be submissive to their masters, just as all of us are to be submissive to authority figures, whether kings or governors, or any other authorities. This attitude recognizes that God is sovereign over our station in life, and that no authorities exist except those which God has allowed to exist.

Now, none of us are slaves, but all of us are under human authority figures of some kind, whether in government or in the workplace, or in any other way. And sometimes, we are treated well and fairly by those authorities. Other times, we are treated harshly and unfairly by them. Slaves in the ancient world faced those same realities. And you will notice that Peter does not say here, “Masters, make sure you are nice to your slaves.” He has no word for masters here. Perhaps there were none in the church at that time. Instead, he says, “Servants (or slaves), be submissive to your masters … not only to those who are good and gentle, but also to those who are unreasonable.” The Greek word translated here as “unreasonable” is the word skoliois. You have heard of the medical condition scoliosis, which is a curving of the spine. The Greek word means “crooked” or “curved,” and when applied to people, it referred to those who were dishonest or wicked. So here God’s word commands those who are under the authority of such people as this to submit to them anyway.

The principle here echoes Jesus’ teaching in the Sermon on the Mount when He said, “You have heard that it was said, 'YOU SHALL LOVE YOUR NEIGHBOR and hate your enemy.' But I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven; for He causes His sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? If you greet only your brothers, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same?” It is easy to submit to those who are good and gentle toward you. You don’t need the empowering of the Holy Spirit and a Gospel-transformed life to do that. Jesus said even tax collectors and Gentiles, the proverbial epitomes of unrighteousness in that day, are able to love those who love them back. But in order to submit to those who are “crooked” toward us, harsh and wicked, those who oppose and persecute us, we have to depend on resources that are not our own. We must have the empowering of the indwelling Holy Spirit to do what would otherwise not come naturally.

This is difficult obedience. But remember that the issue here is not merely obedience to the human master or authority figure. The issue is obedience to God, who commands us to do this. That is why Peter says it is to be done with all respect. Literally, this would be translated with all fear. The Greek word is phobos, same word that is used in 1:17, where he says we are to conduct ourselves in fear. The obvious intention is that it is for the fear of the Lord that we do this. We submit to harsh masters because God has commanded us to and empowered us to. In worshipful fear of Him, we choose to obey Him even when it is difficult.

Martin Luther said, “Let the master be as he may, I will serve him, and do it to honor God, since he requires it of me, and since my master, Christ, became a servant for my sake. … If God should command you to wash the devil’s feet, or those of the worse wretch, you are to do it, and this work would be just as much a good work as the highest of all, when God calls you to it.” We must not fear that suffering always means that God is not pleased with us. In some cases, particularly when our obedience to Him leads to suffering at the hands of difficult people, God is pleased with us and our suffering rises to Him as a fragrant offering. It finds favor to suffer through difficult obedience.

II. God is pleased when we suffer for His sake (v19).

Everyone suffers in life. Not everyone suffers for the same reason. There is physical suffering that we experience because we live in bodies that are corruptible and dying because of sin’s effect on humanity. For this reason, we are subject to everything from colds to cancer, arthritis to AIDS, hernias to heart attacks. Some experience natural suffering as a result of earthquakes, hurricanes, tornadoes, and the like. These things happen because the curse on sin has ruptured the created order and subjected the world to all kinds of disasters. Some suffer because of sin, either their own sin or the sins someone commits against them. And then there are those who suffer for no other reason than that they belong to Christ. God is not pleased with all manners of suffering; but He has told us in His word that suffering for His sake, because we belong to Him and are faithful to Him, finds favor with Him. Peter says here in verse 19 that we find favor with God when we suffer for the sake of conscience toward God.

Often when we talk about salvation, we focus only on the fact that Jesus died to remove our sins. While this is of infinitely great importance, it is really only half of the Gospel. The other half is that God has credited us with the righteousness of Jesus Christ. That means that He views us as bearing the perfect righteousness that Jesus demonstrated in His sinless life. Now, this means that wonderful privileges are in store for us – the temporal blessings God lavishes on us here and now, and the eternal blessings that are awaiting us in heaven. But, if God treats us the same as He treats Christ, then we can expect that the world will treat us as it treated Christ also. And that may not be the best news you hear today. Jesus experienced unjust suffering throughout His life, culminating in His death on the cross. And He promises His followers that we cannot expect better treatment at the hands of this fallen world than He experienced. In John 15, Jesus said, “If the world hates you, you know that it has hated Me before it hated you. If you were of the world, the world would love its own; but because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, because of this the world hates you. Remember the word that I said to you, 'A slave is not greater than his master.' If they persecuted Me, they will also persecute you; if they kept My word, they will keep yours also. But all these things they will do to you for My name's sake, because they do not know the One who sent Me.”

He also said in the Sermon on the Mount, “Blessed are those who have been persecuted for the sake of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are you when people insult you and persecute you, and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of Me. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward in heaven is great; for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.” Notice He doesn’t say, “Blessed are you if people insult you and persecute you … because of Me.” He said, “when.” We have many precious promises in God’s Word, and this is one we often wish wasn’t there perhaps. We have the assurance that we will suffer for the sake of God in Christ. Paul said to Timothy, “Indeed, all who desire to live godly in Christ Jesus will be persecuted” (2 Tim 3:12).

In greater or lesser ways, throughout a Christian’s life there will come dilemmas when standing for Christ will mean suffering, while compromising our convictions will lead to an easier path. We must remember when we stand at that crossroads that the Bible promised us these days will come, and great men and women of faith have stood this test at great personal cost throughout history. We must remember that Jesus said it would happen and that we would be blessed when it does. And Peter tells us here that when we suffer because we follow Christ, when we suffer for the sake of our conscience toward God, this kind of suffering finds favor with God.

III. God is pleased when we suffer for doing right (v20)

Have you heard the saying, “No good deed goes unpunished”? Perhaps some of us have been on the receiving end of suffering for doing what we thought was the good or right thing to do. And then there are times when we suffer because we deserve it. We reap what we sow, and the consequences of our own sin or wrongdoing catches up with us. Now it may seem that God would be pleased when people suffer for wrongdoing, and not pleased when we suffer for doing right. Certainly there is some measure of truth in this. God is glorified through justice being done and wrongs being made right. And certainly God takes no pleasure in the occurrence of unjust suffering. But in cases of unjust suffering, where someone is suffering for doing right, God can be glorified in the actions and attitude of the believer who chose to do right, even knowing that it may bring suffering as a result.

There are some things we just never have to pray about. One of those is the choice to do right or do wrong. We know, when faced with the options of doing what we know is right or sinning by disobeying God, that sin is never the choice God will bless. If you suffer because you did something wrong, God is glorified in justice being done, but not glorified in your actions that led to the suffering. But often, our choices are not so clear-cut as choosing to actively do right or actively do wrong. Sometimes our choice is between doing what is good, doing what is better, and doing what is best. These are difficult decisions to make, and we need to pray about that so that we have God’s wisdom in weighing the choices and making the one that will bring the most glory to Him. Still, at other times, our choices are to do right or to do nothing. Perhaps we calculate that there is risk in doing right, possible suffering to endure if we choose to do right, and this paralyzes us into a state of inactivity. We deem the risk too great, the fear of the unknown insurmountable. So, we do nothing. And God does not bless that. He is not glorified by that.

God is glorified when we do right, in spite of the outcome. When we do right, even if suffering will follow, this finds favor with God. This does not mean that we are to be cavalier and throw caution to the wind. There are calculations to make. Does doing something good come at the expense of doing something better? Does the short-term good, nullify the long-term good? All of these considerations need prayer and biblical meditation, and sensitivity to the Holy Spirit’s promptings. But the point here is to say that if we take a risk and do something good, something right, something that honors God, and suffer because of it, our suffering in that event will find favor with God. We need not fear that such suffering is an indicator that He did not approve of what we did. He may even use our suffering in those situations to magnify the glory He brings to Himself through our actions. Are you faced with a decision? If it comes down to doing right versus doing wrong, that is easy. We know we are to do right. What if it comes down to doing good versus doing nothing? If we opt to do nothing on the chance that we are avoiding suffering then perhaps we need to rethink our decision. Perhaps we need to take the risk and do right, and accept the suffering that comes. If our decision comes down to choosing between good, better, and best, then we need to prayerfully consider the short and long term ramifications, pray for the Spirit to guide us and empower us, exercise biblical wisdom, seek out godly counsel, and then by all means act as we feel led of the Lord. And if suffering should come as a result, so be it. At least we are suffering for doing good, which finds far more favor with God than suffering for doing wrong or suffering for doing nothing.

Now finally, …

IV. God is pleased when we endure suffering with patience (vv19-20)

We do not ever want to give the impression that our righteous and loving God takes pleasure in seeing anyone suffer, especially in seeing unjust suffering. Because of His great love, He is filled with mercy and grace toward humanity, the bearers of His image in the created order. This is why, even when it comes to the suffering of the wicked, God is moved with pity. In Ezekiel 33:11, He says, “I take no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but rather that the wicked turn from his evil way and live.” God has made a way of salvation available to us all through the cross of Jesus Christ so that none of us will experience the suffering that our sins deserve. Christ has received the suffering our sins deserve in His death, so that we might be able to turn from our evil ways and live. So even when our suffering is the result of something we have done wrong, we have still not received the full measure of what we deserve. Christ received the full measure of what our sins deserve, and expressed the agony of that dark wrath as He cried out, “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?” The suffering we still experience in life is a result, in one way or another, of sin’s lingering effects in this fallen world. And when we suffer unjustly, we must not say that God is pleased with the bare fact that we are suffering. Still, in the midst of the suffering, He can be pleased with us when we face the suffering with patient endurance.

Peter says in verse 20, “What credit is there if, when you sin and are harshly treated, you endure it with patience?” The implied answer is that there is no credit in this. You got what you deserved in that case, and you very well should patiently endure your consequences. Such patient endurance under those circumstances is evidence of repentance and contrition. But Peter says that when we suffer for doing right, and patiently endure that suffering, this finds favor with God. It is not the suffering itself that God takes pleasure in; for what would that say about our God? Rather it is our response to that suffering that brings Him pleasure, namely when we patiently endure it. In verse 19, he speaks of the righteous person bearing up under the sorrow of unjust suffering. That is a vivid way of depicting this kind of patient endurance. You can envision the ancient image of Atlas holding up the world on his shoulders, bearing up with strength and courage. The wording here indicates that we are under this burdensome weight of suffering and sorrow, but we find strength and courage to stand under it. This strength and courage comes from the Lord, who supplies our every need through His indwelling Spirit. On our own, we do not have what it takes to bear ourselves up under the sorrow of that unjust suffering. We do not the ability to patiently endure. But God can produce this in us if we yield ourselves to the Spirit’s power in those moments. And as we do, God is glorified in us in the midst of our unjust suffering.

How is God glorified in this? There are several ways. First, patiently enduring unjust suffering demonstrates our confidence in God’s sovereignty. When we react to our own unjust suffering with impatience and anger, it is as if we are saying that this matter has gotten out of God’s control and we must take control of it for ourselves. But nothing, I repeat, NOTHING, is ever outside of God’s sovereign control. Patient endurance when we suffer for doing right makes a bold statement to those around us that we believe God is in control and we trust Him. Second, and related to the first, is that when we patiently endure unjust suffering, we testify to our faith in God’s faithfulness to us. We say with our actions and attitudes in those situations that we believe God is good and that He loves us and that He will not bring us more than we can bear with His power. We proclaim that we believe that God will act in His time and in His way, and when He does, it will be perfect. He does not need us to get ahead of Him and undermine what He desires to do according to His perfect will.

Another reason why there is “credit” in patiently enduring unjust suffering, why it finds favor with God, is that it demonstrates the transformation of our lives into the image of Christ. How do you know how well you are progressing in sanctification? God desires to make you more like Jesus; how do you know how far He has brought you? Do you find your hair growing longer, and a beard developing on your face? Are you suddenly more drawn to robes and sandles for your wardrobe? No. Can you tell how well you are progressing spiritually in times of prosperity and abundance? Perhaps, but it seems that most often we find the sanctifying work of the Spirit most clearly displayed in our suffering. Jesus experienced more suffering than any of us ever will, and ALL of it was undeserved. A good bit of our suffering is often deserved; but when we suffer for doing right, we can measure our response to those situations according to how Jesus handled those situations. And when we find ourselves become more able to patiently endure those things, we become aware of how far the Spirit of God has brought us into the likeness of Christ. Not only do we discover that, but others do as well. Consider your non-Christian family member or friend who has known you since before you followed Christ. Can they see any transformation in your life when you react to suffering the same way you did before? But when they observe that you meet those situations with patient endurance, they know that something is happening in your life that is not happening in theirs. Not only do they witness the Spirit’s transforming work in your life; they begin to envy it. Suddenly, you are being the salt of the earth that Jesus called you to be, creating a thirst in the unbeliever for the Living Water that only Jesus can provide.

There is no special favor from God in enduring suffering that you deserve when you do wrong. But when you endure with patience the suffering that is unjustly experienced when you do right, this finds favor with God and He is pleased with us in the midst of our suffering.

As we conclude, let’s summarize for a moment. Because there is sin, there will be suffering. Only when there is no more sin will there be no more suffering. For the believer in Jesus Christ, that day is coming. We have been forgiven of sin and made righteous by faith in Him, believing that His death received the suffering that our sins deserve, and by His resurrection, we have the assurance of life beyond death in His presence for eternity. There, there will be no suffering. Until then, there will be suffering, and sometimes it will be unjust. We may suffer for no other reason than that we follow Christ. We may suffer because we did something good. But the fact that we suffer does not mean that God is not pleased with us. We suffer because we are human. And in the midst of that suffering, we can please God; we can glorify Him; and we can find favor with Him. This happens when we suffer through difficult obedience; it happens when we suffer for His sake; it happens when we suffer for doing right; and it happens when we suffer with patient endurance. Luther said it this way:

"If I should experience at the same time great injustice and suffering, what is that compared to the fact that Christ, my Lord and Redeemer, who never committed any sin, did the greatest, yea, the inexpressible benefactions of the world, and was so scandalously rewarded for it, that He had to die on the Cross between two malefactors as a blasphemer of God and as a rebel? He suffered for the sake of his good deeds, and the severest pain…; Him will I imitate. … Whoever is a Christian must also bear the cross; and the more you suffer wrongfully, the better it is for you; wherefore you should receive your cross from God cheerfully and thank Him for it. This is the right kind of suffering that is well-pleasing to God."

Our Secondary Citizenship - 1 Peter 2:13-17

Audio available here

In a church like ours, where there are folks from several different countries, there may be some who are “dual citizens.” There are many ways in which a person may acquire dual citizenship, and it is not an uncommon occurrence in our world where travel is so quick and easy. According to the U. S. Government, a person does not lose their citizenship in America when they acquire citizenship in another country unless certain conditions are met. If a person applies for foreign citizenship voluntarily, and demonstrates by their statements or actions that they intend to give up U.S. citizenship, then they may lose their American citizenship. While they remain dual citizens, the law requires allegiance to both the United States and the foreign country. They are required to obey the laws of both countries.

We have been speaking for several weeks now about the fact that the followers of Christ are citizens of His Kingdom. This citizenship is not a pretend or imaginary issue. It is as real as your citizenship in America or any other country. While the government may not view Christians as having dual citizenship in the eyes of the law, in reality, we are very much dual citizens. As it stands, our citizenship in Christ’s Kingdom does not jeopardize our American citizenship. Our new Kingdom does not require that we renounce our earthly citizenship. In fact, the King of our new country agrees with the United States Government that you should obey the laws of both countries and demonstrate allegiance to both. While that allegiance is first and foremost pledged to Christ and His Kingdom, as long as there is no tension between the two, we are expected to live as exemplary citizens of our secondary homeland – America, or whatever country that may be.

There may be some who would feel that the Heavenly citizenship is some kind of pie in the sky that doesn’t really matter here and now. Peter has been reminding us that this citizenship is real and it is primary in our lives. By virtue of that heavenly citizenship, we are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for God’s own possessions; we are merely strangers and aliens here. So, we must never take our heavenly citizenship for granted. But there is another error wherein a person might think that since they are primarily citizens of a heavenly kingdom, that they need not be concerned with the things of this world. One may think that the events and affairs of this world have no bearing on his own life. This person has become the epitome of the expression, “too heavenly minded to be any earthly good.” God would not be honored by any of His people being described that way. According to the inspired text we read today, the more heavenly minded we become, the more earthly good we should be. And though our citizenship in our earthly country is secondary to our heavenly citizenship, it is not unimportant. We have a responsibility as citizens of America, or whatever country we find ourselves in. Our faith in Christ does not eliminate those responsibilities, but rather clarifies and reinforces them. So, let’s examine these truths concerning the Christian citizen and our secondary citizenship.

I. The Christian citizen has a biblically informed understanding of the role of government.

All of us live under some measure of authority. Of course, the whole universe is under God’s authority, and those who belong to Christ have been brought directly under the lordship of Jesus Christ. But there are other authorities over our lives as well. We have bosses at work; we have civil authorities who make and enforce the laws that are binding on us. We might be tempted to reject those authorities as if they did not apply to us because we belong to Christ. If we really belong to Christ, what claim do other, lesser authorities have on us?

The follower of Christ understands that earthly authorities have a purpose in the plan of God. In fact, if we take God’s word seriously, we understand that there are no authorities except those which God allows to exist. Romans 13:1 says, “there is no authority except from God, and those which exist are established by God.” When Jesus stood before Pilate, Pilate asked Him, “Do You not know that I have authority to release You, and I have authority to crucify You?” Jesus responded by saying, “You would have no authority over Me, unless it had been given you from above.” Jesus understood that the very authority that would ultimately order His crucifixion was an authority that God the Father had granted in His infinite wisdom and power. God is sovereign over where we were born, where we live, where we work, and over all authorities to which we must answer in this life. They may not all be favorable toward us, or toward Christianity, or toward God in any way, but if God wanted those authorities overthrown, He certainly has the ability to do so. The fact that He doesn’t indicates that He has a purpose for that authority, though we may not understand it.

In very general terms, all authorities that exist in our lives serve two very basic functions that are specified here in verse 14. First, they exist for the punishment of evildoers. Because human beings are all born in sin, we are capable of unimaginable evil. If there was not some restraint, some threat of penalty and punishment, some means of addressing and correcting evil in society, things would be infinitely worse than they already are. You recall perhaps the epitaph on the period of the Judges in the Old Testament: “There was no king in Israel, and every man did that which was right in his own eyes.” Consider this incident that occurred in Jedwabne, Poland in 1941. In that town, there were many Jewish people who enjoyed good relationships with their non-Jewish neighbors for many years. In 1939, Jedwabne came under Soviet control, and the local government was abolished. In 1941, Nazi Germany overtook the area. German officers informed the citizens of Jedwabne that if they wanted to eliminate their Jewish neighbors, they could have all of their property and assets. They were promised a small military detachment to assist them. On July 10, 1941, a mob of people gathered their Jewish neighbors in the town square and began attacking and beating them. Some 400 or so Jews, including women and children, were led away to an empty barn, locked inside, and burned alive. Those who tried to escape were shot.

This story vividly illustrates that human beings are capable of doing the unthinkable when left without restraint of any kind. We might say, “But do we not have the Word of God? Do we not have God’s authority? Is a government really necessary to punish evildoers?” Make no mistake, God’s justice will eventually and perfectly prevail against all unrighteousness. But in the meantime, God has sovereignly chosen to use human authorities to exist to enact justice against wrongs that are done. Martin Luther said, “Since we are not all believers, but the majority unbelievers, He has enacted and ordained so as to save the world from anarchy that the civil power should bear the sword and restrain the wicked, in case they are not disposed to observe the peace, they may be compelled to do so. This He executes through the civil powers, so that the world may be ruled for the good of all.”

You like the idea of having someone you can call when your home has been burglarized or when your life is threatened, don’t you? Civil authorities are granted the right to exist by God in part for this very reason. But there is another reason specified here as well. Peter says that governing authorities exist for “the praise of those who do right.” Historically, governments have treated peaceful and law-abiding citizens both fairly and favorably. Have you ever been driving down the highway and noticed that a police officer was behind you? It doesn’t matter how fast you are driving at that moment does it? You begin to get nervous. “What did I do?” And then there is that sweet feeling of relief as he changes lanes and moves on past you. Why do we feel that way? If we weren’t doing anything wrong, is there any reason to be afraid? That’s what Paul says in Romans 13:3-4. “Do you want to be unafraid of the authority? Do what is good, and you will have praise from the same. For he is God’s minister to you for good.”

All of this is to say that as followers of Christ, we have a correct understanding of why governments exist and what their proper function is. The Bible has instructed us on this so that we understand that God allows and uses civil authorities for the punishment of evildoers and the praise of those who do right. Now, with that understanding, what should our attitude toward government be?

II. The Christian is commanded to adopt a positive attitude toward authority.

Every president has ups and downs in approval ratings. George W. Bush enjoyed a 90% approval rating at one point in his term. It was on September 21, 2001. On October 31, 2008, just days before the presidential election, his approval rating was 25%. President Obama enjoyed a high approval rating of 69% at one time. It was January 22, 2009, two days after his inauguration. In recent weeks, he has had the lowest approval rating of his term at around 44%. If we were to poll the congregation to state our approval or disapproval of the President, we would probably have strong and diverse opinions. Some would be adamant about their frustrations with this President. Others would be exuberant about their approval of him. But all of us, whether we approve of the president or not, have a biblical obligation to him. Not only to him, but to other authorities as well. Peter tells us here what our attitude should be toward those whom God has allowed to have authority over us.

First, he says that we are to submit to them in verse 13. “Submit yourselves for the Lord’s sake to every human institution, whether to a king as the one in authority, or to governors as sent by him for the punishment of evildoers and the praise of those who do right.” This is not an isolated statement in Scripture. It is reinforced by Romans 13:1 which says, “Every person is to be in subjection to the governing authorities,” and by Titus 3:1-2 which says, “Remind them to be subject to rulers, to authorities, to be obedient, to be ready for every good deed, to malign no one, to be peaceable, gentle, showing every consideration for all men.” In fact, Paul even says in Romans 13 that to resist the authorities that are in power is to oppose the ordinance of God, since there is no authority except that which God allows to exist. In Titus 3:3, Paul contrasts the behavior of the Christian who submits to rulers and authorities with our lives before we followed Christ, in which we were “foolish …, disobedient, deceived, enslaved to various lusts and pleasures, spending our life in malice and envy, hateful, hating one another.”

We see submission to the civil authorities in the life of Jesus. When questioned about whether or not to render taxes to Caesar, Jesus examined a denarius coin and said, “Whose likeness and inscription is this?” They acknowledged that it was Caesar’s image on the coin. Jesus said, “Then render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's; and to God the things that are God's.” By this, He inferred that the coin belongs to Caesar because it bears his image; the life, on the other hand, belongs to God since it was made in His image. We see submission to civil authorities even in the hours before Jesus’ death. When Peter brandished his sword to attack those who were coming to arrest Jesus, the Lord said to him, “Do you think that I cannot appeal to My Father, and He will at once put at My disposal more than twelve legions of angels?” But Jesus did not ask for those angels. He did not oppose Herod’s and Pilate’s authority to put Him to death, but acknowledged that their authority was derived from God Himself.

So, we have clear commands from Peter and Paul, and numerous examples in the life of Jesus, indicating that we are to submit to the government. And it bears mention here that all three of these were put to death by the very government to whom they admonished others to submit. This government was increasingly hostile toward Christianity, depriving them of every liberty that we as Americans cherish, including the rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. But the word from the Lord and His apostles remains unchanged. The followers of Christ are called to submit. Not only are we to submit to those authorities which are favorable toward us, but “to every human institution.” This submission is voluntary, not as a result of forcible coercion or compulsion. It is freely given in recognition that God is ultimately sovereign over all authority.

In addition to submission, the Christian is called to honor authorities. In verse 17, Peter says specifically to “honor the king.” We might protest and say that the king, or the president, or the governor, or some other authority figure is not worthy of honor. Isn’t it interesting that there aren’t any footnotes or parentheses here? In fact, it is very much like the command to honor one’s mother and father. There is no qualification given in that command, nor is it abrogated elsewhere in Scripture. It’s the same with other authorities. The issue is not whether they are honorable. The issue is whether or not we will obey the Lord’s command to honor them. We can afford someone the honor of their position, because it is established by God, without endorsing them or their actions.

Donia and I were in Ukraine in 2000, on a ship in the middle of the Black Sea with 200 Americans and 200 Ukrainians. During a slow day, some of us were sitting around in the lounge talking, and some of us began telling jokes about Bill Clinton, who was still in office at that time. Suddenly, a Ukrainian Christian looked toward us with fire in her eyes, and she began to rebuke us sternly for dishonoring our president. She quoted Scripture to us, like this passage in 1 Peter, and then she asked us, “How often do you pray for your president?” There was a silence you could feel. Most of us could not even look her in the face. I can’t speak for the rest of the group, but I felt a conviction from the Holy Spirit in my heart and the sudden need to be alone in repentance and confession. We are not commanded in Scripture to agree with or approve of those in authority. We are not commanded to endorse their policies. But we are commanded to submit to them, to honor them, and yes, even to pray for them (1 Timothy 2:1-2). Now, the question arises, “Why?” Why should we render such submission, such honor to authorities who may be even opposed to the Christian faith, as those in Peter’s day were?

III. The Christian has a specific motive for his attitude toward the government.

Notice in the text that it is not for the government’s sake, the sake of the authorities, or for our own sake that we honor and submit. Rather, it is for the Lord’s sake (v13). “Submit yourselves for the Lord’s sake.” Again in verse 15 we are told that this is the will of God. How often do we say that we are trying to find God’s will? There’s really no need to go looking for God’s will when He’s revealed so much of it in His Word. If we haven’t begun to follow what He’s already made known concerning His will, why would He reveal more of it to us? It is His will for us to submit to and honor the authorities that are in place in our lives. He tells us why this is His will: “That by doing right, you may silence the ignorance of foolish men.”

In Peter’s day, people were making all kinds of allegations about Christians, accusing them of treason, incest, and cannibalism to name a few. Peter considers these claims to be both ignorant and foolish. It is ignorant in the classic sense of the word, meaning that it is a statement that is not based on knowledge. No person who understood what Christians believed or practiced would utter such accusations against them. And people who speak in ignorance are certainly foolish. And there are two things this world will seemingly never lack: ignorance and foolishness. Today, foolish people make ignorant claims about Christians just as they did in that day. But notice that God’s will takes this into consideration. I would prefer the text said, “God’s will is for them to not make such claims.” But instead, God’s will has less to do with them and more to do with us. His will involves how we respond to foolish and ignorant claims. And His will is that we do right, and thus prove them wrong. Why is it that Christians are being increasingly accused of hate crimes? I think it is in part because there have been no shortage of hateful people who claimed to be Christians. But if we would do right, would anyone believe such allegations against Christians?

And what would doing right include? Look at verse 17: honor all people, love the brotherhood, fear God, honor the king. Do we live that way? We might say, “I can’t honor people who live in such dishonorable ways.” But we are not called to honor their lifestyles. We are called to honor them as people, in part because their lives are valuable because they were made in God’s image and Christ died to redeem them. How about our love for the brotherhood? Jesus said, “By this all men will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another.” One reason the world doesn’t take us seriously is that they see how we treat each other inside the family of God. Our love for each other is supposed to add credibility to the claims of Christ. Do people see that? Do they see that we live God-fearing lives? Or do they see no difference in our behavior at all? Do people see us as exemplary citizens, or as perpetual grumblers always complaining about the government? We should be leading the way in showing honor to the authorities in order that others would see Christ in and through us. Then they would be unable to make ludicrous accusations against us, and if they did anyway, no one would believe them.

Let’s look at verse 16 now and consider one final aspect of our dual citizenship.

IV. The Christian has a responsibility to act out his or her faith.

Act as free men, Peter says. We are free people. Not free in the typical American sense. We are free because we are in Christ. We are free from sin, free from fear, free from bondage. There can be no chains placed on our faith. Authorities, regardless of their earthly power, cannot compel us to become Christian or to abandon our faith in Christ. We are free people. And in some cases, such as is the case here in America, we are free in other ways as well. We are free to gather, free to worship, free to speak out for Christ, free to proclaim the Word of God, and free to vote our convictions at the polls. And we should exercise those freedoms to the fullest extent as we feel led of the Lord. If we are free, we should act as free men.

But we must never use our freedom, Peter says, as a covering for evil. Our freedom must not be exercised in disobedience of God’s clear commands. Just as, in Christ, we are free from sin, but not free to sin, so when it comes to our civil freedoms, we must not use them in ways that violate God’s ordinances concerning our relationship to the government. Church meetings must not become political rallies; Christian gatherings must not become the seedbed of treasonous acts; Christian speech must not become occasions for dishonoring the authorities or stirring up rebellion. Rather, we must use our freedom to demonstrate ourselves to be Christ’s servants. Our freedom should be exercised in seeking the welfare of our society, in showing kindness to those in need, showing love to one another, and in praying for our leaders. Just because we have the right to act in certain ways does not mean that it is right to act in those ways. If we have the right to bear arms, it does not mean that it is right to bear arms at all times for any reason. We have the right to free speech, but not all speech is right. We have the right to assemble, but not all assemblies are for right purposes. We need to evaluate all of these and other activities, not according to our Constitutional rights, but according to our Christian responsibilities. Christ has given us the right to forsake our personal rights for His higher calling. Do our actions in society demonstrate that we are the servants of Christ?

Now, we cannot leave this subject without one final word about a matter that is within the scope of this passage but is not addressed here. This is the question of whether or not it is ever right to oppose the government or the authorities, be they civil authorities or those at work or in any other sphere of life. I believe Scripture gives us examples of a precedent that those times do occur, but they are rare exceptions. The rule is submission and honor. The exceptions occur when man’s laws and God’s laws come into clear contradiction with one another. In those cases, we must obey God and oppose the human authorities. These cases would be those in which we are either commanded to do something that God forbids, or forbidden from doing something God commands. Consider the command issued by Nebuchadnezzar to worship the idolatrous image in the days of Daniel. Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego refused to worship the idol because they knew God had commanded them to have no gods before Him. Some time later, another king, Darius, commanded anyone who prayed to any god or petitioned any man other than the king, would be thrown to the lions. But Daniel did not obey this command. He continued praying, three times every day, and even in front of an open window. But in both of these situations, there was still a sense of submission even in the acts of disobedience. Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego understood that their disobedience would lead to the furnace, and they accepted those consequences. Daniel understood that violating the king’s edict would lead to the lion’s den, and he accepted it. In both cases, God’s people entrusted themselves to the Lord as they submitted themselves to the penalty for their actions. In the New Testament we find the apostles threatened by the authorities in Acts 4 to speak no more in Jesus’ name. The problem was that they had been commanded by Jesus to proclaim the Gospel to the ends of the earth. So, in Acts 4:19-20, they said with great boldness, “Whether it is right in the sight of God to give heed to you rather than to God, you be the judge; for we cannot stop speaking about what we have seen and heard.” And they said this knowing that imprisonment and death were very real possibilities as a result. Of course, the ultimate example of this is Jesus Himself. Had He renounced His claim to be the King of kings, the Son of God, the Savior and Messiah, then He would have likely been spared the cross. But Jesus held fast to the truth of God, and accepted the death that the authorities ordered. As Peter says in verse 23 here, “He did not revile in return; while suffering, He uttered no threats, but kept entrusting Himself to Him who judges righteously.” We must follow His example, empowered by His Spirit.

Yes, there may come those times in our lives when we have to resist authority. We must obey God foremost, and never disobey Him in order to obey lesser authorities. But those cases are going to be rare. It is not just when the authority in question, whether or at work or in society or any other time, inconveniences us or does something we don’t approve of. It is restricted to cases when the authorities command us to do something God forbids, or forbids us from doing something God commands. And if and when these things occur, we are not called to start a revolution, but rather to stand on our convictions, state our case, and accept the consequences that come, even if it is death.

The call to follow Jesus is the call to live on a higher plane. We have different values, different priorities, and a different perspective from others. We have become citizens of a greater Kingdom. But we have not lost our earthly citizenship in the process. We demonstrate our citizenship in the greater kingdom to others through our conduct as citizens of a lesser kingdom. We of all people have a biblically informed understanding of why government exists, and our posture toward the authorities that God has providentially placed over our lives is to be one of submission and honor. We are to pray for those authorities. We are to exercise our freedoms in ways that bring honor to Christ, our true Master and King. We should be the salt of the earth and the light of the world, reflecting God’s glory to those around us and stimulating a desire in others to know the One we follow and to experience what we have experienced in Christ by His grace.

Perhaps today God is speaking to your heart about these matters. This is God’s word. He has spoken; it is our task now to respond to Him as He speaks to us about these things. Perhaps God is speaking to you about your own relationship to Christ. Do you know Him as Lord and Savior? He died for your sins and is risen again, and He can transform your life if you turn to Him.

Alien Life - 1 Peter 2:11-12

Listen to it here

There is a fascination among human beings that we may not be alone in the universe. Science-fiction books, movies, and TV shows have never ceased being hugely popular, no matter how far-fetched their premises. And in a rather unusual case of life imitating art, many scientists and research organizations spend countless hours and dollars every year searching for intelligent alien life forms. I am encouraged by that expression, “intelligent alien life forms.” It assures me that if we were to find a colony of imbeciles on Mars, that we would not be interested in them. We are only looking for the intelligent ones. Are they there? Is there really an alien life-form to be discovered? Whether or not there is such a thing elsewhere in the galaxy, I am in no position to answer. But I do know that here on earth there are aliens. And I also know that there are some in this room. In fact, I want to let you in on something you may not have expected to hear this morning: I am one of them.

Of course, you know that I do not mean that I hail from another planet, though some of you may have suspected that from time to time. There is another way in which we use the word “alien.” We use it to describe a person who is living somewhere besides their true home. In the ongoing immigration debates in our country, we hear much discussion about resident and non-resident aliens. These terms describe those who reside in or visit a country that is not their homeland. This is the sense in which Peter describes his readers as “aliens and strangers.” It applies to them geographically because they had likely once been citizens of Rome, but had been transplanted by the Empire to colonize Asia Minor. But the term is also applied to these Christians spiritually because their true homeland was neither Rome nor Asia Minor. They were citizens, first and foremost, of the Kingdom of God. Like them, though we may have been born in America, or though we may have our immigration papers in proper order, or perhaps even become a legal citizen, if we are followers of Jesus, our status in this country or any other country on earth is that of an alien. As Paul said in Philippians 3:20, “Our citizenship is in heaven, from which also we eagerly wait for a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ.” We are waiting for our King to come and take us to our true home, and He has promised that He will.

We are strangers and aliens in this world. This was a phrase that Abraham used to describe himself to the Hittites in Genesis 23:4 as he negotiated for a place to bury his wife. He said, “I am a stranger and a sojourner among you.” That’s how it is rendered in the NASB. In the Greek translation of the Hebrew Scriptures, the wording is exactly the same as we find here in verse 11. The writer of Hebrews makes it clear that though Abraham had been given that land by the promise of God, “by faith, he lived as an alien in the land of promise, as in a foreign land, dwelling in tents with Isaac and Jacob, fellow heirs of the same promise; for he was looking for the city which has foundations, whose architect and builder is God” (Hebrews 11:9-10). He knew that Canaan was not his true home, just the place he was to dwell until God took him to his true home. Peter uses the same language to describe his readers, and it applies to us as well. We are strangers and aliens as we live for Christ in this world. We are the alien life-forms. So, how shall we live? What are the marks of the alien life? Peter gives them to us here in these brief verses.

I. The alien life is marked by personal spiritual discipline (v11)
On our street, we are one of a very few households that does not own a dog. But the neighborhood dogs are a constant source of entertainment for us. We watch them walk their owners every day, sometimes several times a day. It’s really interesting to compare dogs, or just about any other kind of animal, to people. Of course there are many differences, but one that I repeatedly notice is that when dogs want to do something, they just do it. Depending on the strength of the owner or the length of the leash, the owner may or may not be able to stop them. So, on a near daily basis, I observe the neighborhood dogs chase their would-be prey, fight turf wars with each other, and do many other things that obviously strike their fancy at the moment. Human beings do not have to do that. Every human being has the ability to make moral decisions that override natural desires. That doesn’t mean that we all do, but we all can. Many wonder today why young people demonstrate so little restraint in their conduct, and I believe it is a direct result of their being taught that they are descendants of animals, whose greatest evolutionary achievement is the development of a thumb. Oh no, we are so much more than that. We are created in the image of God and have a universal moral awareness of right and wrong. Sin has corrupted our desires and our ability to control them, but no person is without the ability to natural, but inappropriate, desires. Now, Christians have an advantage over the rest of humanity in this regard. We not only have the ability to override personal desires, we have a supernatural enabling from the Holy Spirit and a stronger motivation for denying ourselves when it is necessary.

Peter addresses his beloved brothers and sisters in Christ here, and says to them, “I urge you as aliens and strangers to abstain from fleshly lusts.” First, let’s identify what he means by fleshly lusts. At first glance, we would most likely assume he is talking about illicit sexual desires. To be sure, those are included, but fleshly lusts are not merely limited to that. The Greek word here translated lusts is a word that means a longing or intense desire. Now, it should be noted that in some contexts, this can be a positive thing. For instance, it is the word Jesus used at the Last Supper when He said, “I have earnestly desired to eat this Passover with you.” Paul uses this word in Philippians 1:23 when he says that he has a “desire to depart and be with Christ.” Desire in itself is not a bad thing. God gives us desires. But the problem with desire is that it is corrupted by our sin nature. The sexual desire, for example, was given to us by God for pursuit and expression within the bounds of holy marriage. But sin corrupts this desire and people pursue the satisfaction of it outside of those boundaries. Take the desire for food as another example. We need food to live, do we not? God gave us the ability to feel hunger so that we would know when our bodies need nourishment. But sin unbridles the desire and leads to gluttony. We could also speak about our natural desires to seek revenge, to amass wealth, to accumulate possessions, to gain popularity, etc. In Galatians 5, Paul lists “the deeds of the flesh” to include “immorality (porneia, sexual sin), impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery (pharmakeia, perhaps alluding to drug use in the acts of sorcery), enmities, strife, jealousy, outbursts of anger, disputes, dissensions, factions, envying, drunkenness, carousing, and things like these.” These things come all too naturally to us. The point is that we who are the followers of Christ must not respond to every stimulus that comes our way by doing what comes naturally. We have been empowered to act supernaturally.

God does not issue commands to His people in His Word that are impossible to carry out. So when Peter says that we are to abstain from these fleshly lusts, we need to believe that it is absolutely possible to place these desires under the Lordship of Christ and have victory over them. It is not merely an act of master and slave obedience, but God has given us the power of the Holy Spirit, so that where our flesh is weak, His strength is perfect. So in the moment of temptation, we need to pause long enough to consider our actions rather than just responding to the stimulation of our desire like Pavlov’s dog. In that moment, we need to surrender to the Holy Spirit’s control and find His power to overcome those desires.

Well, we might ask, what does it hurt to indulge a carnal desire, especially when it is done in private and no one notices? Peter actually answers that question here. He says that these fleshly lusts wage war against the soul. Imagine for a moment that you are the commander of a military post. One day, the guards at the gate phone you and say that there is a group of terrorists at the gate, and they said they don’t mean any harm, but they would just like to come in and poke around a bit, take some pictures, ask some questions. What commander in his right mind would say, “Well, I guess if they mean no harm, what could it hurt? Go ahead and invite them in.” When we indulge inappropriate desires, or even appropriate desires in inappropriate ways, it is like we are inviting a spiritual terrorist into our soul for a visit. The indulgence of those desires will sabotage us spiritually, weakening us and dulling our spiritual sensitivities, making us useless for the cause of Christ. Over time, our sensitivity to conscience and to the Spirit’s conviction becomes numb as we repeatedly ignore their warnings, and soon we begin to engage in deeper levels of sin more habitually and indiscriminately. What could it hurt? It could destroy you, even if no one ever knows about it, because it corrupts from the inside. Sooner or later, that corruption will begin to be evident on the outside.

Some months ago, I put a mouse trap in our laundry room. It was one of these “humane traps,” you know, no blood, no mess, instant, painless death for the mouse. The only downside is that it is hard to tell when there is a mouse in it. A couple of weeks ago, I began to smell this really awful stench, and sure enough, my nose led me to the trap. Who knows how long that little mouse had been in there? There was rotting death inside that trap, and eventually, it became evident because of the odor it emitted. Folks, when we engage in so-called “private sin,” we can keep up appearances for a while. In fact, others may never know exactly what we are up to. But that sin is working spiritual death within us. Over time, people begin to notice that things are different with us. Maybe it is our attitude, our personality, our temper, our interests, or something else. But soon, the stench of spiritual death begins to surround us like a toxic cloud. At any moment along the way, repentance is an option for us. We can fight the good fight in the Holy Spirit’s power and begin to experience victory. But the longer it progresses, the more difficult it becomes because we become weaker and weaker for the battle. At some point, we may need help from our brothers and sisters to bring us out. Sin is deadly, and it is a big deal. So we must be vigilant in our internal war against it.

So, one mark of our lifestyles as strangers and aliens is personal spiritual discipline in which we depend on the Spirit’s power within us to abstain from fleshly lusts.

II. Alien life is marked by a witnessing lifestyle. (v12)

You have heard me say that one of the many things that Christians and non-Christians agree on is that the idea of witnessing makes both of them nervous. I recently observed a young Christian sharing the Gospel with someone in public, and I was curious as to which one was going to pass out first. Both were extremely uncomfortable. Some years ago, I suppose in an effort to relieve some Christians of the anxiety of witnessing, the concept of “lifestyle evangelism” became popular. The idea was that it is not our words, but our deeds that do the witnessing, so we should not worry about talking to others about Jesus, we should just live good moral lives, and that will present the gospel to them. There are several major problems with this approach. First, none of us live lives that are THAT good. Don’t get me wrong … you may be a person of superior moral excellence, but can any of us really say that our lives are a clear reflection of the gospel? Second, are there not morally good lost people? Some of them are living more upstanding lives than many Christians! So what does that say for letting our lives do the witnessing? Thirdly, none of us are better than Jesus, are we? So, how often did Jesus say, “You know, I am not going to use words, I think I will just let them see how I live. That ought to do the trick.”? Easy answer: NEVER. So, can your life outpreach Jesus’ life? To think that it can is the epitome of arrogance. Fourth, the gospel is “good news.” To tell the news means that words are necessary. There is nothing we can do or not do that can communicate the news that Jesus Christ is the incarnate God who died for our sins and rose again. Sharing the gospel means that we will need words.

So, is the lifestyle not important? Oh, on the contrary. You see, the Gospel is a message about radical transformation. It is news that because of what Christ has done, we can be made brand new, born-again, empowered for victorious living by the indwelling Spirit, and made citizens of God’s Kingdom. Now our lives are either going to confirm that news or contradict it. If you do not demonstrate the gospel through your life, then words about the gospel are meaningless and empty. So, lifestyle minus words equals not witnessing. Words minus lifestyle equals not witnessing. Witnessing equals words PLUS lifestyle. And what does the witnessing lifestyle look like? Peter says that it is one of excellent behavior. The word translated “excellent” here is also translated elsewhere as “beautiful, lovely, fine, etc.” The interesting thing about those words is that they typically describe something you can see, or at least perceive in some way. So our lives should be noticeably excellent in the eyes of those we encounter. This will validate the truth of the gospel.

Have you ever known a Christian who “acts better” when they are around other Christians than they do when they are around lost people? It’s like, when they come to church, they put on this show of spirituality, but when they are around lost people, they just blend right in with them. Well, notice here that Peter says that we must keep our behavior excellent among the Gentiles. This is really a rather unfortunate translation. The Greek word is ethnos, and is used elsewhere in the New Testament to denote “the nations.” To understand the point, remember what he said earlier in verse 9, that in Christ you have become “a holy nation.” Now, when you are among those who are not of this nation, but of “the other nations,” it is of the utmost importance that we demonstrate godly lives. That’s not to say that when we are with other Christians that we can just let it all go and act like pagans. No, it is to say that we must be done with the hypocrisy of pretending to be righteous around one another, and chasing after unrighteousness among the lost. We must show the lost the difference that Christ makes in our lives.

Now, Peter says here that these lost people are slandering the Christians as evildoers. Christianity was seldom understood by outsiders in the first century. They heard things about them and made assumptions about them that were not accurate. So, for instance, they heard that the Christians refused to worship the Emperor or the gods of the pantheon; therefore they were accused of being atheists and traitors. They heard that Christians were eating flesh and drinking blood, and did not understand the symbolism of the Lord’s Supper, so they assumed the Christians were cannibals. They heard that Christians loved their brothers and sisters, greeted them with holy kisses, and only married their own brothers and sisters; so, they were accused of incest. This was slander against the church: spoken lies that were told to defame the Christian’s character in the society. What were the Christians to do? Peter’s exhortation is to prove them wrong by the excellence of their conduct. Let them see what we do, and how we live, and of course, when there is an opportunity, tell them what we believe and correct their mistaken assumptions. And as a result, these people may turn from slandering Christians to glorifying God.

Of course today, everyone loves Christians and speaks highly of us in the public square, right? No, this is not 1950 anymore. Public perception of Christians has changed. We are accused of being hateful because we oppose homosexuality. We are accused of being misogynists because we oppose abortion. We are accused of being ignorant because we believe in creation instead of evolution. They say we are angry, narrow-minded, and all kinds of other things.

What are we to do about this? I tell you what we must NOT do. We must not do what some Christians, some churches, and some entire denominations have done. We must not compromise our convictions for the sake of public relations! And we must not respond in anger and retribution. That would only prove them right! No, instead, we must do two very specific things. First, we need to be very clear with our message. If you were to ask the average person on the street what Christians believe, how do you think he or she would answer? They probably wouldn’t know, right? They might say, “They believe in God,” or “they believe in Jesus,” or “the Bible.” More often, they might say, “They believe that only people who go to church go to heaven, and they don’t believe in homosexuality or abortion, and they don’t drink or do drugs.” Friends, an answer like that needs to be received by the church as an indictment. If this is what the public understands Christianity to be, then we have really garbled up the message. In many cases, the Church has crusaded to make well-behaved pagans out of people rather than making disciples for Christ. We have aimed at reforming morality rather than transforming lives by the power of the Gospel. Every now and then I get a call from someone at News & Record about something going on here in the corridor, and honestly I usually dodge their calls. But sometimes they get me. And they ask me about crime and safety and drugs and prostitutes, and all this stuff. And in every answer I give them, I mention the cross and Christ and salvation and the new birth. Why? Is it to be annoying or to shove religion down their throats? No, it is because I want to be very clear that we are not a people who are simply against things. We are a people who are passionately FOR the Gospel of Jesus Christ. We are a people who believe that the government can throw as much money as they want at the problems of our city, but unless Jesus Christ changes the heart of the individual person, there will be no change. I want to be really clear with the message. I want to challenge you to do the same. When you have opportunity to speak to unbelievers, let’s talk about what we are for, and let’s keep the focus on the cross. As Paul said in Romans 1:16, “I am not ashamed of” what? THE GOSPEL! Why? Because “IT is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes.” If someone is going to hate me, I want to make sure the central issue is the bloody cross of Jesus and not our difference of opinion on a social issue or a mistaken assumption about what my Christianity entails.

So that’s the first thing we must do in the face of public opposition to Christianity: be clear with the message. The second thing is this: confirm the message with our lifestyle. Do you realize how much harm is done to the gospel every time a professing Christian is involved in a moral scandal? When King David committed adultery with Bathsheba and had her husband killed, Nathan the prophet told him, “by this deed you have given occasion to the enemies of the LORD to blaspheme.” And that is the way we need to see it. When our lifestyles compromise the Gospel, we actually give the lost a reason to not believe. So, we must keep our behavior excellent among the Gentiles. And as we do that, and as we keep the message of the Gospel clear, we may find that some of them begin to realize that there is something to this Jesus stuff after all. Maybe God would be pleased to use what they see and hear in you to draw them to faith in Christ.

Peter concludes here with a reminder of the urgency of this. He mentions the “day of visitation.” What is that? That’s the day of the return of Jesus Christ. Folks, we can’t just sit back and say, “Oh yeah, one of these days we need to get serious about this stuff.” Now is the time, and today is the day. Christ is coming, and when He does, He will find two kinds of people on the earth: those who glorify Him by faith in Christ and those who blaspheme Him in unbelief. And it is our task as aliens and strangers in the world to make worshipers out of blasphemers. How then shall we live? In personal spiritual discipline, that we might be useful to the Lord, filled with His power and presence, and strengthened as we abstain from fleshly lusts. And in a life of excellent behavior that confirms our words of witness to the saving Gospel of Jesus Christ.

If you are here today and not a follower of Jesus, we invite you to join us. None of us are perfect, and we have often presented a poor witness for Christ, but it is for imperfect people that Christ came and died, and that should give you great hope. Trust Him to save you from your sins and make you His own, and His Spirit will empower you to live in abundant victory, and to live forever in the home He created for you.

Believers, it may be that the Holy Spirit is speaking to your heart today about something related to your personal spiritual struggles, your witnessing, or your lifestyle. My prayer would be that we might all allow Him to convict us as He will, and that we might surrender every point of personal weakness over to His perfect strength to transform us for His glory.