The Death Christ Died - 1 Peter 3:18

Audio available here (there was a technical problem with the recording ... the reading of the Scripture and beginning of the opening illustration did not make it onto the recording.)

I have had the privilege of traveling to some amazing places in the service of Christ. And I have had to learn to overcome some personal preferences and quirks. Believe it or not, I have always been a picky eater. The first time I was in Africa, one day for lunch we were served oxtail soup. I just couldn’t make myself eat something that came off of that end of an ox. Someone tried to encourage me by telling me it was probably made with the tail of a water buffalo, not an ox. That was not helpful. There were huge chunks of tail floating around in the soup, and I just had to leave the table. I decided I could hold off until dinner. So guess what we had for dinner that night? Ox tongue. That thing looked like it was going to eat me first. Then there have been the times when dinner consisted of an entire pig, or an entire goat, which had been barbecued and laid out whole on the table for you to just pick off the parts you wanted. And over time, I’ve just had to learn to do like Jesus taught His disciples to do in Luke 10, “eat and drink whatever they give you.” But there is always one sight that makes me smile when I see it. I can spot this sight from miles away, and I know when I see it that happiness is soon to be enjoyed. You don’t see too many of them in Africa, but in Ukraine, I could have told you where every one of them in the entire country was. I’ve already checked, and there isn’t one in Nepal, but there are 171 of them in India. Up in the sky, or high upon a wall, it glows like a glorious blessing … a giant golden M. Under that M, there might as well be a pot of gold. All over the world, in some hard to imagine places, that big M is a symbol that people understand and recognize, even if they have never eaten a Big Mac. Some have said that it is the most recognized symbol in the world.

Symbols have an interesting power to connect us with the realities they represent. The golden M has become a universal symbol that tells us that good, cheap, fast food can be found there. Christianity also has a universal symbol. All over the world, when people see our symbol, they know that something related to the Christian faith is present. While Christians have used many symbols through the centuries to identify themselves, one symbol has always been the primary mark of the Church. Interestingly, that symbol is an instrument of torture and death – the Cross. This symbol, more than any other, represents what Christianity is all about. It is about a death that occurred that changed everything for the world and humanity. The death of Jesus Christ on the Cross is the very core of the Christian faith. What is happening on this cross is more than just a good man dying a brutal death. The person dying is not just a man. He is fully human, but he is also fully divine. He is God-incarnate, God-in-the-flesh, the God-man. And as He is dying, He is not helplessly at the hands of evil men. He is carrying out a divine plan to deal with the primary problem of humanity and history, namely the problem of sin.

Exodus 34:6-7 presents for us what we might call “the riddle of the ages.” There God reveals Himself, saying, “The LORD, the LORD God, compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in lovingkindness and truth; who keeps lovingkindness for thousands, who forgives iniquity, transgression and sin; yet He will by no means leave the guilty unpunished, visiting the iniquity of fathers on the children and on the grandchildren to the third and fourth generations.” Here is a gracious, compassionate, patient and loving God, who forgives iniquity, transgression, and sin; and yet He promises that He will “by no means leave the guilty unpunished.” Does this seem impossible? How can He be one who forgives, but who at the same time punishes with certainty the guilty? Throughout the rest of the Old Testament, the answer to this perplexing riddle unfolds page by page in subtle whispers and shouts of clarity, until at last the answer is seen in vivid color. This God who forgives sinners, yet who punishes sin, acts in history to resolve man’s dilemma in the person of Jesus Christ on the Cross. What is happening here as He dies is captured in a single word: atonement. Sin has ruptured the relationship between a holy Creator and His wayward creatures, such that there is a breach now between them. We stand before this holy God knowing that we are guilty sinners. We cannot do any good deed to make ourselves clean before Him. Sin has so radically corrupted us that we are incapable to make ourselves right before Him. But He is God, and nothing is impossible for Him. He has provided salvation for humanity through the atoning work of Jesus Christ. Atonement is God’s action in the death of Christ to save humanity from sin. In this single verse, 1 Peter 3:18, we learn three very important truths about this atonement that has been accomplished through the death that Christ died.

I. The death Christ died accomplished a substitutionary atonement.

All of us understand the concept of earning a wage. Perhaps you have a job in which you get paid a certain amount for every hour you work. Or you may have a job that pays you an annual salary, which is based upon certain requirements being met. You get what you earn. That is a basic principle of economics and labor. In the beginning of creation, God established a wage for mankind concerning righteous living. There was one tree that was forbidden to eat from in the garden, and God said, “in the day that you eat from it, you will surely die.” That is the wage. If you do this, you earn that; if you eat from the forbidden tree, you will earn death. And this established a principle for mankind that Paul summarizes in Romans 6:23, where he says, “The wages of sin is death.” Sin earns death. That is God’s law. Adam experienced it. In the day that he ate of the fruit, physical death began to occur in his body. He lived much longer than that day, but he lived out the rest of his days in a dying body. But spiritual death occurred instantaneously in Adam. Immediately, because of his disobedience to God, he was spiritually dead. Sin drove a wedge between God and Adam. Adam was ashamed of His sinfulness before God, so he hid from Him, and he tried to cover himself with fig leaves, the works of his own hands. But his own works could not “cover his sins” before God. In grace and mercy, God made another covering for the sinful man. The Bible tells us simply that “the Lord God made garments of skin for Adam and his wife, and clothed them.”

Now, where did this skin come from? The Bible does not tell us explicitly, and it doesn’t need to. We know where “garments of skin” have to come from. Something had to die for the man’s sinful state to be covered. So, when the very first sin of humanity was committed, God instituted a program of reconciliation, whereby sin could be covered through the death of a substitute sacrifice. Something else, a lamb perhaps, had to be killed. Death was inflicted upon the substitute. It is obvious that Adam and Eve understood this, and taught this to their children. We see in the very next chapter of Genesis that Abel approached God with a sacrifice: the firstlings of his flock. He understood that his sinfulness required the shedding of blood, and that God accepted the sacrifice of a substitute in his place. This principle is unfolded throughout the Old Testament Law, with God prescribing for His people the various regulations for what kind of sacrifices they could offer, and for what sins, and in what manner. And all of these sacrifices were teaching humanity the principle that sin required death, and that an innocent substitute could be offered for an atoning sacrifice. God was preparing them to understand little by little what He would do for them in the death that Christ died.

Adam’s sin corrupted the entire human race. Every descendent of Adam is born in the state of spiritual death, born into bodies that are physically dying from the day we take our first breath. We inherited a condition of sinfulness, and it expresses itself through our lives in our own sinful actions and attitudes. So, we are sinners, by nature and by choice. We inherited the death penalty from Adam, and we ratified the penalty by our own sins. We affirm that we deserve both physical death and spiritual death because of our sinfulness. And if our spiritual death goes untreated before our physical death occurs, then we bear that penalty for eternity. We enter eternity separated from God, bearing His holy wrath forever in that horrible place the Bible calls hell. But in the death Christ died, a remedy was provided, an atonement for sin, whereby we can be reconciled to God.

Peter says here that Christ died for sins. In a sense, we all die for sins. If it weren’t for sin, there would be no death. The universality of human death is proof of the universality of human sin. But when we come to the death Christ died, we something unique. He died for sins, but He had no sins of His own. Because of His miraculous virgin birth, Jesus was not born with a sin nature as we are. He was undefiled when He entered into the world. And throughout His life, He committed no sin. Not only was He undefiled by sin, not only did He commit no sin, He also lived a life of perfect obedience to God. He was not merely sinless; He was also perfectly righteous. Both are important to understand. If all that was required of Jesus was to be sinless, then He could have been sacrificed as an infant. God could have allowed Him to be murdered in the holocaust of children instituted by Herod. But it was necessary that He also be perfectly righteous. He died for sins, but not for His own for He had none. He died for ours, “the just for the unjust.” The perfectly righteous Christ died for radically sinful people—people like you and me. He became for us, in His death, our substitute.

All of those animals that were sacrificed under the Old Testament Law were training the minds of God’s people to see the wickedness of sin in its bloody reality, and to anticipate a day when a final sacrifice would be offered. Those animals were imperfect substitutes, He was a perfect substitute. I liken it to paying for something on credit. When you purchase something on credit, you get to take it home and enjoy it, but the bill has not yet been paid in full. The cost has been covered, but it has not yet been paid. The animal sacrifices were like purchases made with credit. They covered sin, but they didn’t pay for the sin. They were unable to pay for sin. The charges were still accumulating, and the day would come when the accounts had to be settled fully and finally. As Jesus was dying on the cross, He uttered that single word, Tetelestai, which is translated in our Bibles as “It is finished.” It is an interesting word in the original language. Archaeologists have uncovered ancient tablets which bore records of accounts, and when those accounts were paid in full, they were marked with this same word: Tetelestai. Jesus paid what sin had earned in the death He died, and He paid it for us.

As the just, suffering for the unjust, Jesus Christ bore our sin before His righteous Father, and bore all of the wrath that those sins deserve. The intensity of God’s wrath toward sin was such that the earth was darkened and shaken to its crust while Jesus died. But more than this, for the first time in all eternity, the perfect fellowship between God the Father and God the Son was severed by sin. Jesus cried out, “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?” This was the most severe agony of the cross. Not the piercing of His hands and feet; not the scourging and shame He endured, but the wrath He bore for our sins is what makes our atonement possible. He died for sins, the just for the unjust. As the hymn-writer said so well, “In my place, condemned He stood.” He bore our sins and made atonement for them as our substitute, and in exchange He now allows us to bear His perfect righteousness before the Father so that we are reconciled to God through Him.

II. The death Christ died provided a sufficient atonement.

Preparing for this mission trip to Nepal coming up, several of us have had to get a lot of shots to prevent us from getting sick while we are there. Some of the vaccinations, like polio for example, we had as children, but we have to get a booster, because the childhood dose is insufficient to protect us in that environment. Others, like typhoid or meningitis, we have to get now, and then if we go back in a few years, we’ll have to get another one, because they are only good for so long. And then there are others, that we might have received as children or sometime later, that are good for life. That initial dose is sufficient to last through all of life. When it comes to our sin, the atonement that Christ provided in His death is sufficient for all people, for all sins, and for all time. Peter says that Christ died for sins once for all, and that this death was enough “to bring us to God.”

Could anyone ever accurately estimate the number of lambs and bulls and goats that were slaughtered as sacrifices in the Jerusalem temple? On the day that the original temple was dedicated in the time of Solomon, in a demonstration of the unworthiness of sinful people to have a temple for the Holy God in their midst, a sacrifice of 22,000 oxen and 120,000 sheep was offered. And that was on ONE DAY! And sacrifices were made there every day. If Solomon’s temple was dedicated sometime around 1000 BC, and Herod’s temple was destroyed in 70 AD, and subtracting around 70 years during the Babylonian captivity, we are talking close to 1000 years of daily sacrifices. That’s some 360,000 or so days of bloodshed at the temple of Jerusalem; and some on days, like the day of atonement, the sacrifices abounded. And, all of these sacrifices were not sufficient to bring us to God. But, the writer of Hebrews compares what those Old Testament priests were doing with those sacrifices with what Jesus did in the death He died. Hebrews 10 says, “Every priest stands daily ministering and offering time after time the same sacrifices which can never take away sins.” Their work is never done. It is daily, time after time, same sacrifices over and over again. They are always on their feet, standing, because there are always more sacrifices to be offered, and yet they can’t take away sin. They are covering sin, but not paying for sin. But then Hebrews 10:12 says, “But He (that is, Jesus), having offered one sacrifice for sins for all time, sat down at the right hand of God.” Notice, one sacrifice – Himself – sufficient for all time. And then He sat down at the right hand of God. His work was finished. Atonement was finished. What millions of dead animals could not accomplish was fully and finally accomplished in the death of Jesus Christ. The temple that was the scene of all that bloodshed was brought down and destroyed by the Romans, but it happened under the providence of God. He didn’t need that temple any longer. He didn’t need any more animals to die. In the death of Jesus, sin was atoned for once and for all.

That means that all the sins that had been covered by the Old Testament sacrifices were finally atoned for. All the sins that were yet to be committed had been atoned sufficiently. That means that the most minor and the most major sins had been sufficiently atoned. That means that the most respectable and the most vile sinner had the atonement he or she needed provided for then and there in the death Christ died. Because of sin, we are separated from God. We need to be brought to God. What are you trusting to bring you to God? There is only atoning sacrifice which is sufficient: the death Christ died. You can’t add to it or take away from it. It is Jesus, and Jesus only, plus nothing and minus nothing, that brings us to God. The death He died is a sufficient atonement. Nothing else will bring you to God.

III. The death Christ died is a secure atonement.

In Dickens’ Christmas Carol, he says of Scrooge’s business partner, Jacob Marley, “Marley was dead… There is no doubt whatever about that. … Old Marley was dead as a doornail. … There is no doubt that Marley was dead.” Dickens said, “This must be distinctly understood, or nothing wonderful can come of the story I am going to relate.” Now, if you are going to understand anything about this atonement that we have in Christ, you need to understand that Jesus was as dead as Jacob Marley. Dead as a doornail, no doubt whatever about that. The sin of humanity required death as a penalty, and Jesus paid it. He bore the wrath of God against all of the wickedness of humanity’s sin, the agony of the cross, and was punctured through the heart to prove that He was dead. He was wrapped in burial cloths and laid in a tomb, and that tomb was sealed over and guarded. He was dead. If there was a price to pay, it had been paid in full. The price for sin had been paid, and at the end of the day it looked as if sin and death had won. Sin had destroyed humanity and humanity’s God. Peter says he was “put to death in the flesh.” It was not a pretend or imaginary kind of death. Jesus was dead as a doornail. That must be distinctly understood, or nothing wonderful can come of the story I am going to relate.

It doesn’t seem wonderful at this point. Jesus, the King of Glory, dead. But the story doesn’t end there. Praise God, there is no period after the words “put to death in the flesh.” There is a comma and a glorious three letter word, “BUT.” He was put to death in the flesh but made alive in the spirit. It appeared for a moment of time that sin had conquered, and death was victorious, but that was Friday. On Sunday, the rest of the wonderful story was told. Death was not victorious, but defeated. Christ is risen from the dead! He has conquered sin and death forever. He died to bring us to God, but He is not a corpse we must crawl over to get there. He is risen and He Himself leads us into the presence of God, where we will live with Him in resurrected glory forever. Our atonement, our saving rescue is completed and is secure. Death is no longer to be feared. Sin has been dealt with completely, and conquered through His resurrection. If we belong to Jesus, our future is secure in His eternally glorious hands.

Hebrews 7:24-25 says that the former priests were prevented from continuing in their ministry by death. They could offer a sacrifice for someone’s sins, but then they had their own to sin to deal with and their own death to die. But Jesus, on the other hand, “because He continues forever, holds His priesthood permanently. Therefore He is able also to save forever those who draw near to God through Him, since He always lives to make intercession for them.” Because Christ is risen from the dead, never to die again, and because He is seated now at the right hand of the Father, you and I have a high priest who will always plead His very blood and righteousness on our behalf. We need not fear that we who have trusted in Him will be forgotten or forsaken when we stand before the Righteous Judge on the last day. He bears the scars that He bore for our sins when He defeated them fully and finally in the death He died. We bear the righteousness of the life He lived. And we reap the benefits of the victory He accomplished in His resurrection. Nothing or no one can ever separate us from Him. Because of this wondrous atonement, we are securely reconciled to God through Him.

When we look at the death Christ died, we are confronted with two overwhelming realities. First, as we see the death He died, knowing that it was for us and for our sins, we see that we are more flawed, more corrupted, more wickedly sinful than we ever imagined. That is what we deserve. But second, we see in the death He died that we are more loved than we ever dreamed. We are so sinful that Christ had to die, but so loved that He was glad to die to reconcile us to God. The riddle of the ages is that God is a compassionate, patient, gracious and loving forgiver of sin, but is also determined to by no means leave the guilty unpunished. How can it be? The riddle is solved in the person of Jesus. In the death He died, our guilt is punished by a righteous substitute, and we are forgiven, made righteous, and brought to God. Therefore Paul could say in Romans 3:26 that God is just, and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus. He is just because He has punished sin with the full measure of His wrath. He is the justifier because He punished that sin in the death that Christ died, and has covered us in the righteousness of the life He lived.

Because we have been the recipients of so great a salvation, Paul says in 2 Corinthians 5:20-21 that we are now ambassadors for Christ, as though God were making an appeal through us. And that appeal is this, he says, “We beg you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. He made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.” We who have come to know this Christ through the substitutionary, sufficient, and secure atonement that He has provided, would echo that appeal today and say to those who are near and those who are far off: “We beg you on behalf of this Christ who died for sins, once for all, the just for the unjust, that you might become righteous in Him and be brought to God, be reconciled to God.”

Making A Defense: 1 Peter 3:15

(Audio available here)

In our culture, we’ve grown accustomed, and perhaps numb, to hearing apologies. Because of public interest in scandals involving high-profile celebrities, the nightly news has become an R-rated hour of images, videos, and rumors involving politicians, athletes, and anyone else in the spotlight. And, with the scandals come the apologies. Most often, they are carefully crafted statements that are put together by lawyers and public relations advisors, with the intention of deflecting the public scrutiny without acknowledging any particular wrongdoing. Most of us were taught as children that an apology is not an effort to dodge responsibility, but to expresses regret for wrongs that we have done. But in the ancient world, an apology was something altogether different than what we were taught as kids and what we see in the media today. In the writings of the earliest Christians, we find many documents containing the word “Apology” in the title. In these writings, there is no sense of dodging the issues or regret for wrongs done. An apology in those days had to do with making a formal defense to official charges. An apology would have involved reasons and arguments against charges that were made against an individual or a group of people.

As we look at the most notable of apologies written by early Christians, we discover that there were several accusations commonly made against the Church. Christians were often charged with treason because they refused to acknowledge Caesar as Lord. The simple phrase that we take for granted, “Jesus is Lord,” was considered a traitorous act of sedition in the empire. Some Christians were also accused of being atheists because they did not worship the gods that were recognized in the Roman pantheon. Others were accused of incest and sexual perversion because the world misunderstood a Christian’s love for his or her brothers and sisters. Still other Christians were accused of cannibalism because, in the Lord’s Supper, they claimed to be eating flesh and drinking blood. Christians were also accused of being followers of ignorant and foolish myths because of the belief in the Trinity, the incarnation of Jesus, and His bodily resurrection from the dead.

In the wake of those accusations, Christians were not silent. They spoke publicly and wrote prolifically to defend themselves against these charges. These arguments were called apologies, and those who delivered them became known as the Christian apologists. Today, we have an entire field of study, which was one my two concentrations in Seminary, called Christian Apologetics, which has to do with making reasonable and intelligent defenses of the claims of the Christian faith against the criticisms and challenges that we face in the world. Few, if any, would accuse Christians today of incest, cannibalism, or atheism, even though some may still accuse us of treason or anti-intellectualism. But new challenges, objections, criticisms, and attacks are launched against the church in every generation. Like those in the earliest days of the Church, they are often based on distortion, misrepresentation, misunderstanding, or malicious deceit. And it is the task of Christians in every generation to present an apologetic, a defense, of what we believe, as we seek to make the Gospel of Jesus Christ known in our respective cultures.

Now, who has the responsibility of defending the faith? Who are Christianity’s apologists? In the early centuries of the Church, there were well known Christian apologists like Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, and Athanasius. Later there came the likes of Anselm, Aquinas, and John Calvin. Today, we know of those like Ravi Zacharias, Lee Strobel, Josh McDowell, and others who are well-known apologists. And we thank God for these men, and for their apologetic work, but we must not think that the task of apologetics is for the specialists. This verse, 1 Peter 3:15, tells us clearly that the task of apologetics, the task of defending what we believe, belongs to us all. When Peter speaks of making a defense, he uses the Greek word apologian, as if to say, be ready to engage in apologetics. And Peter was writing to ordinary Christians like each of you. Every time he uses the word you in this verse, it is plural in Greek. Let’s translate it into good Southern English here: “Sanctify Christ as Lord in all ya’all’s hearts, being ready to make a defense to everyone who asks all ya’all to give a reason for the hope that is in all ya’all.” This means that the task of defending the Christian faith belongs to every Christian. The task depends on us all. It is a massive task, it is a daunting task, it is a task of eternal significance, and it is a divine privilege of God’s grace to be a participant in this task of defending the claims of Jesus. But the task of defending the faith comes to us with several requirements, just as it did for those in Peter’s day. We find these requirements in the verse, so let’s examine them.

I. Defending the Faith requires us to be spiritually prepared.

June 6, 1944 is a date we remember as D-Day. On that day, over 160,000 Allied troops landing on the beaches of Normandy, initiating the liberation of France from Nazi occupation. When one thinks of the enormous role that France has played in the history of Europe, it comes as a surprise that it could have ever been captured by the relatively upstart power of the Third Reich. Historians have cited several contributing factors to this, but many conclude that the primary reason Hitler’s forces were able to roll successfully through France was the unpreparedness of the French military leaders. French Generals thought that they would not see a major war in their time, and certainly not one of the magnitude that Hitler was able to wage. History has taught us time after time that preparedness is a necessary key to victory and success.

Christians have no excuse for being unprepared for the task of defending the faith. If we have not heeded calls like the one we find here to “always be ready”, then we have stuck our heads in the sand like the proverbial ostrich. But you will notice here that Peter’s instructions for preparing ourselves are relatively simple. We aren’t told to read dozens of volumes on systematic theology, critical argumentation and philosophy. We are told quite simply to “sanctify Christ as Lord in our hearts.” But this simple instruction is packed with meaning.

First, we observe that there is a necessary personal commitment. Christ must be sanctified, or set apart, as Lord in our hearts. This is more than just a theological commitment or a historical assertion. It is a personal commitment that each person must make to establish Jesus Christ as the Lord over his or her life. It is not enough to know that Jesus is Lord of the universe, Lord of the church, Lord of heaven and earth, time and space; that’s important, really big stuff. But we must each personally consider whether He is Lord of our lives. Does He reign on the throne of our hearts? If Christ is Lord, that means that He is our Master, our King, our Commander. It means that He is the sole object of our allegiance, our devotion, our affection and worship. As we stated last week in our study of the larger context, we must constantly be on guard against rivals to His Lordship. Are there idols, in the form of ideas, habits, interests, people, activities, or anything else, that threaten His absolute authority over our lives? If so, they must be purged; and if we are truly children of God, we can rest assured they will be purged. God will not allow us to serve two masters if we have been adopted into His family. We will either tear the idols down ourselves, or they will be consumed in the crucible of affliction, so that we emerge singularly devoted to Jesus as our Lord. Could it be that one reason that Christians are so ill-equipped for the task of defending the faith is that many of us have not truly set Christ apart as Lord in our hearts and guarded His throne in our lives from all rival allegiances that emerge?

If Jesus is Lord, then we must be submitted to His authority. Jesus said, “Why do you call Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ and do not do what I say?” That means that if He is Lord, then His word is final and we must do what He says. There is no room for willful disobedience under His Lordship. He said that if we love Him, we will keep His commandments (John 14:15). He did not say that if we love Him, we should keep His commandments. He said that our obedience to Him reflects our love for Him, such that it is impossible to simultaneously say that we love Him while blatantly trying to live outside of His authority.

Part of this submission to His authority involves a willing embrace of His mission. What is the mission of Jesus? He identified it plainly in Mark 10:45 when He said that the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve and to give His life a ransom for many. He came on a mission to save lost and sinful humanity from sin. He did this in His sinless life, His sacrificial death, and His glorious resurrection. After conquering our sins through His death and resurrection, in John 20:21, He said to His followers, “As the Father has sent Me, I also send you.” That means that He has commissioned us who follow Him to continue His mission of rescuing humanity from sin. We call this the Great Commission. In Matthew 28:19-20, Jesus said to His disciples, “Go … and make disciples of all nations,” that is, all ethne, all peoples of the world. His mission is not yet complete; it falls to us to carry it on, as He said in Acts 1:8, as His Spirit-empowered witnesses beginning where we are, and extending beyond our own culture, and to the ends of the earth. As we do this, we will encounter atheists, pagans, materialists, hedonists, polytheists, Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, and adherents of belief systems we’ve never even heard of. That means that we are not just proclaiming Christ into a vacuum, but we are actually seeking to persuade others to follow Jesus only, instead of the false gods and ideologies that they presently adhere to. We can’t expect to do this without some challenge or opposition. So we must be ready, not just to go and tell, but also to set forth, to defend, and to reason with others about why belief in Christ is not just one option among many, but is in fact the only option available for us to be reconciled to God. And we must spiritually prepare ourselves for this task by examining our lives to see if we are truly committed to Jesus Christ, and to Him alone, as Lord in our hearts. If we are, then we will submit to His authority and embrace His mission. Defending the faith will require this kind of spiritual preparation.

II. Defending the faith requires us to hear the cry of the lost.

During the 18th and 19th centuries, when cholera epidemics raged, there was a widespread fear that people may be accidentally buried alive. This gave rise to various designs of “safety coffins.” One of these was invented in 1829 by a man named Johann Gottfried Taberger. In Taberger’s coffin, a cord would be attached to the body inside the grave, and to a bell outside the grave. That way, if a person was buried before they were dead, they could signal to those among the living to get them out! If the graveyard watchman heard the bell ringing, his task was to insert a tube down into the grave and begin to pump air down to the person until the coffin could be dug up. This gives new meaning to the phrase “saved by the bell”!

The Bible says that humanity is dead in sin (Eph 2:1). No one has been buried alive; we were all at one time completely spiritually dead because of our sinful condition. And it takes a miracle of God’s grace to raise the spiritually dead. He does this by the work of regeneration in which the Holy Spirit gives new life to a person. The Spirit works through the Word of God and the witness of the believer. Ordinary folks like us are involved in raising the dead when we share God’s Word with the lost people around us. Now, the analogy with Taberger’s safety coffin is imperfect. Those who rang that bell were not dead. Those who are lost are spiritually dead. But allow a liberty here for the purpose of illustration. When you understand the true condition of the lost and the saved, you realize that we are walking around in a spiritual graveyard, surrounded the graves of the lost. But as we share the message of Jesus Christ by our words through our deeds, some awake to see their true condition. There are, in a sense, countless bells ringing all through this spiritual graveyard, as the lost are crying out for rescue. They are hopeless and helpless unless we come to their aid. We must hear their cry, the ringing of their bells, and respond with the message of salvation, the gospel of Christ that is fittingly summarized in verse 18: “Christ died for sins once for all, the just for the unjust, so that He might bring us to God.”

Peter says that there is something Christians have that the lost world does not have, and many of them notice it, especially when we cling to Christ in the midst of hardship. That precious something is “hope.” We have neutered the word “hope” of its power by equating it with wishful thinking, but genuine Christian hope is anchored deep in the reality of Christ’s death and resurrection, and His Lordship over this world and the world to come. The love, the faith, the joy, the confidence that we have in this world, in spite of all the suffering and hardships around us and which afflict us, is that we have hope because of Jesus Christ. We might have cancer, but cancer does not have us; Christ has us. There might be great disaster, but there is a greater Deliverer. We might face suffering, but we do so knowing that we have salvation. We might face death, but we do so knowing that death has been trampled by life. Sin may surround us, but that sin is swallowed up in the righteousness of Christ that has absorbed us and will make all the world’s wrongs right on the last day. If you know Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior, this is not “Your Best Life Now.” Your best life is yet to come, and on the promise of Jesus Himself we know that it will come. “Your best life now” is only true if you are lost and en route to an eternal hell. Hardships, suffering, disaster, and distress surround us all. But some of us have hope. And that hope in Christ shines in the darkness, and some of the lost around us are able to see it. And they notice that they don’t have it. And some will cry out like someone in Taberger’s casket, as if to say, “Hey, you out there, the one with all the hope! Get me out of here!” And if we will hear that bell ringing, we have to pump the fresh air of hope into their lives. If we hear their cries, we will be able to share that hope we have in Jesus with them, and defend it.

Every lost person in the world today is hopeless. Any hope they have apart from Christ is false and wishful thinking. Paul describes the condition of the lost in Ephesians 2 as being “without hope and without God in the world.” They’re all hopeless, and some will ask us about our hope, others will not, at least not directly. They might ask about all sorts of stuff that seems to be unrelated, but there may be questions behind their questions; they may deploy some smokescreens to disguise their condition of hopelessness. Now, here in this verse, Peter’s focus is on answering the questions of everyone who asks you to give a reason for the hope that is in you. And certainly, there are many who will ask. But our task is not limited to the inquisitive. In Romans 1, Paul describes himself as a gospel-debtor. He owes it to every person, regardless of their ethnicity or social background, to proclaim the gospel to them. They’re all hopeless, and they will remain that way unless we share with them the hope we have in Jesus. And as we share it, new questions will arise; challenges and objections will surface. It will not be enough to just say that we have hope. They will want to know if there is a reason for the hope we have, and we will have to defend it as we share it. But we will never get around to this if we do not first hear the hopeless cry of the lost and dying world. It is a requirement if we are to defend our faith.

III. Defending the faith requires us to show Christ through our lives as we tell of Him.

I took a piece of bark to school one day for show and tell. A piece of bark? What was I thinking? My classmates had seen bark before, so what was the big deal? As they passed the piece of bark around, I told the other third graders about how this piece of bark came off a tree in my grandfather’s backyard, a tree that sprawled out over his lake that I used to climb, and it had this magnificent crook that I would often sit in. While I was in that tree, it was like being on another planet. I felt like I had escaped everything when I was in that tree. Now I could have passed the bark around, and folks could have looked at it and said, “Wow, Reaves! Bark! Nice job.” But the story gave meaning to what they saw. I could have told the story, without bringing the bark, and they would have said, “Great, you have a special tree. And you might need therapy.” But by showing and telling, my words had more substance, and the object had more meaning. For similar reasons, defending the faith is a matter of show and tell. If we tell others about Jesus, but don’t show them Jesus through our lives, then we are hypocrites. If we show them, but don’t tell them, we are just confusing them.

So Peter says that our apologetic task, our task of defending the faith, requires certain qualities to be evident in our lives. The first is gentleness. This speaks to our demeanor as we interact with other people. We have to keep in mind that the people Peter is telling his readers to defend the faith to are the ones who are persecuting them. Understandably, the natural inclination would NOT be to be gentle. But Peter says, “Gentleness is the order of the day.” How can you be gentle in that situation, or even in lesser situations when our cherished beliefs are being challenged? Frankly, you can’t. But if you are a follower of Christ, you have a power to overcome your own abilities. The Holy Spirit indwells you, and He has the ability to control you if you yield to Him. And when He does, certain characteristics that are not native to ourselves begin to emerge. Paul calls these the “fruit of the Spirit” in Galatians 5, and that fruit includes gentleness. We don’t need the Holy Spirit’s help to be obnoxious; we are perfectly capable on our own. But we need Him to overcome that tendency and help us to be gentle as we show the gentleness of Christ. Jesus never tried to overpower those who came to Him with genuine questions. Even with the rich young ruler, who walked away from Jesus in unbelief, the Bible says that Jesus loved him and let him walk away. Jesus did not try to win followers by force. He invited people to follow Him, saying “I am gentle and humble in heart.” Do those with whom we speak find that we are gentle as He is? Do they see His gentle compassion in our lives as they interact with us?

When I first began to study apologetics, I did so from a posture of arrogance. I wanted to learn arguments and evidences and trump cards I could whip out in a debate and force my opponent into submission. But one of my early professors in this field said to me, “Russ, we don’t have any sledgehammers.” What he meant by that is that we cannot compel someone to believe. We can present arguments and evidences in a loving and gentle way, and like Jesus, we have to be willing to let folks walk away. But they will remember the nature of our conversation and the genuineness of our faith, our hope, and our love as they reflect on the encounter. The gospel message is offensive. It says that all those who die without Christ go to hell. It says essentially that all other gods and philosophies and religions are lies! That’s offensive. But we are not to be the cause of offense. If there is to be offense, it must be due to the exclusiveness of the message, not the obnoxiousness of the messenger. We must be gentle as we show Christ and tell of Him.

And then Peter says that this task requires reverence. The Greek word is phobos, which we can easily see relates to fear. But we are not to fear the person with whom we are speaking. That is Peter’s point in verse 14: “Do not fear their intimidation and do not be troubled.” Our proper fear is identified in 2:17 – “fear God.” This fear of God affects our defense of the faith by giving us a proper motivation: Christ commands us to be His witnesses, and He is our Lord, so we obey. But it also provides us with a proper perspective. We are trying to raise the dead! You and I simply cannot do that. But God can! So, defending the faith with reverence for God means that we abandon our efforts to convert the unbeliever on the strength of our arguments, efforts, and tactics. We put our sledgehammers down, and while presenting our hope, our reasons, and our defenses, we do so knowing that if the dead are going to be raised, our sovereign God is going to have to do the raising. He alone is able, so our confidence is in Him. Therefore, we can be gentle and faithful to the message we must proclaim, and trust Him with the outcome. None will come to Christ unless the Father is drawing. Jesus said this in John 6:44. We can’t draw them, but our defense of the Gospel can be used to help them overcome their resistance to God’s drawing if He so chooses to use it. We are merely His messengers, and it is a blessed privilege of His grace to be invited to be one. And we fear Him, reverence Him, worship Him, as we proclaim and demonstrate Him through our words and our life, confident that He is able to save sinners, just as He did for each of us.

The Irish evangelist Gypsy Smith once said, “There are five Gospels. Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, and the Christian, and some people will never read the first four.” What he means is that God has set us in the path of that individual to be the first Gospel they encounter. What they see and hear in us will have an effect on how they respond to the saving message of Jesus. Peter says that we must always be ready to make a defense to everyone concerning the reason for our hope. This requires us to be spiritually prepared by setting Christ as Lord in our hearts over all other allegiances and affections; to hear the cry of a hopeless world; and to show forth Christ through our lives as we tell of Him with our lips. So, are you ready?

You may find that in your daily interaction, you encounter those of other faiths and unbelievers who are armed with questions you cannot answer. You need not be intimidated by this. Live your life for Christ and gently tell your story of hope that you have found through Him, as you trust in the Lord to do His saving work. And you may feel the need to prepare yourself to be better equipped for the task. I’ve compiled a list of some great resources that will help you in the task of apologetics, and you will find it in your bulletin today. But the main thing is always this: Are you ready, and are you willing? If so, God will use you. Perhaps today He is calling you to commit to the task of sharing and defending your faith with others.

Or maybe you are here today and you feel hopeless. Have you ever placed your personal trust in Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior? Surrounding you today are a multitude of folks who were once just as hopeless, but we have found in Jesus Christ the only hope that humanity has. He died for our sins, in our place, the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring us to God. This is our hope, and our hope in Him is abundant enough for us to share with you today if you will receive Him. If you turn from your sins and trust Him to save you, He will, and He will give you new life that is abundant and eternal.

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From the Archives of IBC History ...

While cleaning out some things in the home of one of Immanuel's first African-American members, one of our staff members found this article from the March 13, 1972 edition of the local paper. We cannot determine if it was from the daily or evening paper. As I read it, I marveled at a few things. First, it is amazing how times have changed for the better: some of the language used in this article to describe those of different ethnicities strikes us today as highly insensitive, and that is an indicator of positive change in my opinion. Also, it is a positive shift among churches today that few if any would admit to being intentionally ethnically exclusive. But then there are some things that disappoint me as we look at this article from almost 40 years of hindsight. For one, the state of our churches have not changed as much as was anticipated then. The "they-can-come-if-they-want-to" attitude that Dr. Early touches on in the article is still the most widely prevalent notion of what it means to be integrated. More disappointing is that intentional segregation is still occurring and is taught as a core value among church growth and church planting leaders, it is just not called that anymore. It is now called "targeting." Dr. Early's comments near the articles end hit that subject hard. Finally, I read this article with great joy as I see how my dear predecessor Dr. Early was a faithful forerunner in the effort to cross cultural ethnic bridges and bring people together under the Lordship of Jesus. Most impressive is that he did so from a foundation of biblical faithfulness. I read the article I have copied below with great interest, and I trust that you will too.

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INTEGRATION 'PROGRESSES' IN CHURCHES

The pastor of the city's first church to actively seek an integrated congregation said today more and more of Greensboro's traditionally white churches finally seem to be opening their doors to blacks.

"This movement I believe will accelerate even more in the future, I am confident of this," said the Rev. Paul early of Immanuel Baptist church on High Point Road. He was interviewed before addressing Greensboro Optimist Club this afternoon at McClures Restaurant.

He said this forthcoming acceleration will be due to the increasing acceptance of blacks into the mainstream of society. Immanuel Baptist, founded in 1945, began seeking out Lumbee Indians as members in 1965 and blacks two years later. Today the church has 13 black members and about 30 Indians. The church's board of deacons includes one black and two Indians.

The Rev. Mr. Early said today his church became aware of the need for black members when it literally opened the back to door to the church and looked outside.

"We suddenly realized we have blacks living behind our building," he explained. "We came to the conviction that it was hypocritical for us to have missionaries in Africa and at the same time ignore the people three doors down from us. It was our responsibility to open ourselves to brother Christians."

Asked why other churches have been slow to seek blacks, the Rev. Mr. Early said said, "I believe the ministry (at these churches) simple never read the Bible with enough openness of mind to realize that the New Testament requires this type of ministry.

"The Bible clearly rules out the 'they-can-come-if-they-want-to' attitude displayed by many churches. The Bible requires the church to be active integrationists. In Christ Jesus there is no racial distinction."

The Blessedness of Suffering for Christ - 1 Peter 3:13-18

Audio available here

It was about this time of year in 2002, I was on a mission trip in Salem, Massachusetts, sharing the gospel in the streets during a major Wicca festival. It was the fourth consecutive year we had done this, and it had always gone very well. This time, things got a little crazy. I had offered a man passing by a gospel tract, and he took it, and he went to sit down on a bench to read it. After reading it for a few minutes, this man began to scream loudly and profanely. He was shouting in the street, “Don’t take the garbage this guy is handing out! He thinks we are all going to hell because we don’t follow Jesus!” I just ignored him for a while and continued witnessing, and then he came up to me and got in my face and became really aggressive with me. I remained calm and tried to get a word in here and there to tell him that this was not my opinion, but it was what the Bible says. Suddenly, he began shouting for the police. I thought, “Thank God! The police will straighten this out, shut this guy up, and we can get back to what we are doing!” After all, I wasn’t doing anything wrong. I asked the guy if he wanted a tract, and he said yes, so I gave it to him, and then he flipped out. And that is pretty much what he told the police when they showed up. No problem, right? Much to my surprise, the police officer pulled me aside and said, “Listen, we have some pretty strict laws in this town about religious harassment, and if you don’t shut this down right now, I am taking you and your whole crew to jail.” When I tried to explain the situation, and that I wasn’t harassing anyone, the officer said, “Look, all is well here in this town. Everyone gets along just fine until people like you come along and disturb the peace, so shut it down, or I lock you up.” Well, we just decided at that point to do some prayerwalking, and we found another area of the festival and started witnessing again, and thankfully my criminal record is still clear.

It is a general rule that Peter states in verse 13 of this text: “Who is there to harm you if you prove zealous for what is good?” Generally speaking, that is true. Do what is right, and things will typically go pretty well for you. But, there are exceptions that arise occasionally. Sometimes, when we do what is good, we will suffer precisely for the fact that we were doing what was good. The way this is worded in the text, those should be rare exceptions. If you find that this is the case every day or relatively often for you, then you may need to consider some other things that may be going on. But on those rare occasions when we do face suffering for the sake of righteousness, Peter says that we are blessed. This word blessed has to do with being the “privileged recipients of divine favor.” That kind of takes us by surprise, doesn’t it? We typically don’t think of suffering and blessedness in the same sentence. And to be sure, not all suffering is blessed. But a particular kind of suffering always is, and that is suffering for the sake of righteousness.

What does it mean to suffer for righteousness? Jesus defined it for us 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” (Matt 5:10-11). The key phrase here is “because of Me.” It is when we suffer because of our relationship with Christ, because of our service to Christ, because of our witness for Christ, that the Apostle Peter and the Lord Jesus Himself says that we are blessed. Consider the first generation of Jesus’ followers: In Acts 5, when Peter and some others were arrested, harassed, and flogged because they had been out preaching the Gospel, the Bible says that they were rejoicing that they had been considered worthy to suffer shame for His name, and that they kept right on teaching and preaching about Jesus (Acts 5:41-42). They actually rejoiced in the midst of this suffering, and considered it an honor that God deemed them worthy to suffer for Christ. We often speak of how blessed it is that we do not endure such suffering, but perhaps we need to wonder why it is that God does not give us this joyous privilege to suffer for Christ? After all, according to 1 Peter 3:17, here in our text, there are times when this suffering for righteousness is God’s will. Again, the language does not require us to believe that all suffering, or even all suffering for righteousness is God’s will, or that God wills for all of us to suffer for Christ; but it does suggest that some such suffering is within His will. After all, 2 Timothy 3:12 says, “Indeed, all who desire to live godly in Christ Jesus will be persecuted,” so we must expect this to some degree.

So, here we are presented with some facts that are, at first glance, difficult to swallow. God may will us to suffer for Christ’s sake, and when we do, we are blessed. So, the question we want to answer as we dive into this text is: In what way are we blessed when we suffer for Christ? And in this passage, we find several answers to that question.

I. Suffering for Christ is a blessing because it purges our lives of idols (v15a)

It may seem odd to suggest that there would be idols present in the lives of those who are suffering for Christ. After all, if we were idolators, wouldn’t it be unlikely that our faith in Christ was the cause of our suffering? Most often when we think of idol worship, we think of someone bowing down in reverence before some kind of carved statue or image. But idolatry is much more subtle than this. It crops up in our lives sometimes unknowingly. And none of us are exempt from the temptation to commit this unthinkable sin. John Calvin said, “Every one of us is, even from his mother’s womb, expert in inventing idols.” He said, “man’s nature, so to speak, is a perpetual factory of idols.”

When we talk about idols in our lives, we do not mean usually an exchange of Christ for an idol, but rather the addition of an idol to Christ. And that idol is not typically a graven image of some kind. It can be, but it can also be a habit, a hobby, a practice, a person, an idea, or an object. Usually what happens is that we have in our mind a notion of what some have called “false hells.” In other words, we imagine some state of being that is miserably unimaginable and we want to escape it or avoid it. For some, maybe it is being fat, or being poor, or being ugly, or being unpopular, or being ignorant. Those are just a few examples. And so, having identified a false hell that we want to escape or avoid, we begin searching for something that will deliver us from it. If our false hell is being fat, then we begin to look for some exercise regimen or diet that will deliver us; if it is being poor, then we begin to look at money or possessions; if it is being ignorant, then we begin to look toward education and information. And we begin to trust in these things to deliver us from our false hell and lead us into a corresponding false heaven: being slim, being rich, being smart, being popular, being attractive, etc. Usually, these fake heavens adorn magazine covers, and the articles inside present us with the path to attain that heaven. So that thing that we trust to take us out of our fake hell and into our fake heaven becomes a “functional savior,” or in other words, an idol. This is the way idolatry has always been. In ancient days, fake hell might have been infertility, so people worshiped fertility idols as a functional savior. It might have been crop failure, so there were functional saviors like gods of rain and gods of harvest. Today, it looks a little more sophisticated, but it is the same idolatry.

Now the problem is when people say, “I believe in Jesus, and I know I’m going to heaven. That’s great, and someday, that will be really precious to me, but right now I just don’t want to be poor, or sick, or fat, or dumb, or uncool, and Jesus can’t really help me out of that so I need something else to take care of that right now.” Having nice possessions, being healthy, being smart, being cool, these things aren’t necessarily bad. But when they become as important, or God forbid more important than being faithful to Christ and living for His glory, then we have an idol, a functional savior that we have put alongside of Jesus in our lives. And it happens to all of us on a pretty regular basis. In fact it happens every time we sin. We choose something other than Christ to provide us with ultimate satisfaction.

Now, we are going along with this little pantheon of Jesus and a couple of functional saviors in our lives, and we take a stand for Christ and begin to suffer for it. At this point, we begin to take inventory of our lives and we realize, “OK, it is time to choose what is most important in my life.” This is why persecution has always purified the church, and why the church always comes through persecution stronger than it was before. It is also why times of peace and prosperity have tended to corrupt the church. In times of oppression, people have to narrow down what they are willing to die for. So, in those areas where persecution of Christians is intense, there isn’t much debate going on about what kind of music is used in worship, or about which pet program gets the biggest budget line. The persecution wakes us up to realize that Christ, His Word, His Gospel are the things worth living for and dying for ultimately, and everything else can take a back seat to that.

So Peter’s readers are finding themselves suffering for the cause of Christ in Asia Minor. They are being slandered and mistreated. The persecutors think, “If we intensify the pressure, they will back down on all this Jesus stuff.” And that makes sense, right? We might even be tempted to think that ourselves. Like, “Wow, living boldly for Christ is getting me in trouble, so maybe I need to cool it a bit.” But Peter’s advice is actually the opposite. In the midst of this suffering, he says, “Sanctify Christ as Lord in your hearts.” What does it mean to sanctify something? We are used to hearing that word in the opposite context: Christ sanctifying us. We know that this means that He is making us holy, making us more like Himself, perfecting us, transforming us into His image. So, how can we sanctify Christ? We can’t make Him more holy than He already is. The idea of sanctification is that of setting something apart for holy use. In our sanctification, Christ is setting us apart for His own use. So when we sanctify Christ as Lord in our hearts, we are setting Him apart, and acknowledging His supreme holiness. We are taking a spiritual inventory of our lives, identifying and tearing down idols that have crept in alongside of Him, and recommitting ourselves to Him alone as Lord, because He alone is worthy.

So, the suffering that takes place because of Christ actually shows us how glorious Christ is, and how worthy He is for us to suffer for His sake, and it purges the subtle idolatry from our lives. We come through better off, because we have isolated Christ alone as Lord in our affections. And for that reason, it is a blessing for us to experience it.

II. Suffering for Christ is a blessing because it offers us unique opportunities for witness (v15b)

In Jesus parable of the sower, He spoke about seed falling into four different kinds of soil. You recall that one of those soils was rocky, and there was quick growth, but the sun scorched the young plant and it withered away. Jesus said that this is like that person who hears the Word of God and receives it with joy, but their faith is only temporary. He said, “when affliction or persecution arises because of the word, immediately they fall away” (Mark 4:16-17). This person thinks that following Jesus will lead to a life of peace and ease, but when the Word of God begins to draw suffering into their lives, they abandon the faith, indicating that they were never true believers. Jesus became an inconvenience to their pursuit of happiness, and He had to go. How many so-called believers like this do you think the world has seen? I would guess that they have seen many. This is one reason why people are so seemingly uninterested in the gospel. They detect that it only makes a difference for a person in good times, but provides no real hope in bad times. But when a person suffers, and suffers particularly for the sake of Christ, and he or she holds onto Christ, even more steadfastly in the midst of their suffering, this captures the attention of those around us. It is not what they are used to seeing; it’s not what they expect to see. And Peter says that this makes people curious.

Don’t you find that one of the hardest parts about witnessing is finding someone who is even remotely interested in listening to the Gospel? They will talk to you about any subject under the sun except Christ, and when He comes up in the conversation, any excuse to get out of the conversation is welcomed. It is not that they are hostile to the faith, it is just that they think it doesn’t matter. But, Peter says that when we hold onto Jesus in the midst of suffering for Him, we don’t have to go looking for an audience; the audience will come to us with questions. There will be some, he says, who will ask you “to give an account (or a reason) for the hope that is in you.” There’s something different about that person. That person has something that the watching world immediately recognizes is missing their lives, and they want to know what it is. “How can you hold onto your faith in the midst of all this suffering?” they will ask. And you will no longer have to find a way to insert Christ into the conversation. The door is open now for you “to make a defense.”

The Greek word here for “defense” is the word apologian, from which we get the word apologetics. Apologetics is the term we use for defending the Christian faith against its critics. I was down on Tate Street one night, talking to some students about Jesus, and a guy was sitting there listening in on our conversation. When we wrapped it up, he said to me, “Hey, can I talk to you about something?” He said, “What evidence can you give me to believe in God?” And we had this long conversation about creation, intelligent design, moral law, aesthetics, and other things. And for every point I made, he made a counter-point. Mind you, I am convinced that my points were better than his, but nonetheless, it was a lot of give and take. And there, in that rather sterile environment of two intellectuals bouncing ideas off of one another, there was not much convincing going on. Finally, we ended on this note: I said, “Listen, Jesus said that no one can come to Him unless the Father draws him,” and that means that if He isn’t drawing you, then all the evidence in the world won’t convince you; but if He is drawing you, you will come with or without evidence.” But suppose for a moment that this young man had pulled a gun on me and said, “Now do you believe in Christ?” Do you think that he would be more interested in what I had to say about Jesus if I said “Yes”? Do you think that my defense would have been more convincing? I suggest that it would have, because now he has found that my faith in Christ is not just a subject I am willing to chat about over an espresso, but rather it is something that I am willing to die for.

I was a youth pastor when the Columbine massacre took place in 1999. I had been trying to teach these kids about the treasure of Christ for a year and a half, and they acted like that was the least important thing in the world. Columbine took place on a Tuesday, and when my high school students gathered on the following night, all of a sudden they were interested in Christ more than anything else. I didn’t have to try to lure them into conversation or convince them of anything. Cassie Bernall and Rachel Scott, and other students in that horrific event, had presented them with the strongest apologetic possible. At the barrel of a gun, when asked if they would choose to live or follow Christ, they chose Christ and died. Since that time, there has been some question about whether or not these girls were actually killed for their faith in Christ, but 24 hours after the fact, the question that was on the minds of the students I ministered to was, “How can I have the kind of hope in Christ that can help me look death in the face and hold onto Him?” They had seen the tepid faith of their Christian friends and parents and responded with a yawn. But when they found someone who was willing to be faithful unto death, they wanted to know how it could be possible.

I would venture to say that we would find the same true as we suffer for Christ, even if it does not lead to our deaths. When people see us clinging to Christ even as we suffer for His name’s sake, they will wonder why and how it is possible. At that point, we must be ready to give a reason for the hope that is in us. And this is one of the blessings of suffering for Christ – it provides us with unique opportunities to be His witnesses.

III. Suffering for Christ is a blessing because it proves the genuineness of our faith (v14b, 16)

We proclaim that following Jesus will transform a person’s life. Do we believe it? Have we experienced it? Can we prove it? One thing is certain, we don’t need to prove it to God. He already knows. But has the genuineness of our faith been proven to ourselves and to others? One way to know is to see how our faith holds up under fire.

In verse 14, Peter paraphrases Isaiah 8:12, and says to his readers, “Do not fear their intimidation and do not be troubled.” It seems only natural that if the people around us are intimidating us because of our faith in Christ, that we would be both troubled and afraid. Peter’s readers likely were, and that is why he tells them here to not be afraid and troubled. But it isn’t like there is some switch we can flip to turn off the fear and the anxiety. There has to be some deeply rooted truth in our lives that reminds us that the worst anyone can do to us is kill us, but that Jesus has conquered death and will welcome into life eternal with Him. And when a believer can face suffering for Christ and overcome all fear and distress, there is evidence that his or her faith in Christ is real.

He says in verse 16, “Keep a good conscience.” This takes us back to those statements in verse 9, where Peter said that we must not return evil for evil or insult for insult, but give a blessing instead. When we are being insulted and when evil is being enacted against us, the most natural response is to retaliate. But when we can overcome that tendency, and when we can stay in the right, keeping our conscience clear of any wrongdoing, and actually bless the persecutor in return, we are seeing evidence of the genuineness of our faith, and so is everyone else.

But there is an interesting twist here with the outcome. When we respond to suffering this way, demonstrating the genuineness of our life transformation in Christ, notice the effect that it has: “in the thing in which you are slandered, those who revile your good behavior in Christ will be put to shame.” The idea here is not to embarrass or humiliate our persecutors, but rather to demonstrate that what they have said about us or done to us has been without cause. They will be silenced in their slander, ceased in their evildoings, and perhaps even taken aback by the genuine faith they see within us, which may lead to them giving fresh consideration to the gospel for themselves. So, suffering for Christ is a blessing because it proves the genuineness of our faith, and silences our critics, and may even result in their salvation.

IV. Suffering for Christ is follows the example of Christ (v17-18)

You notice that verse 18 is inseparably connected to verses 13-17 by the conjunction for. This suggests that verse 18 is a basis or foundation for what preceded it. Just prior, Peter says that it is better for us to suffer for doing what is right than for doing what is wrong. That doesn’t seem better to us, does it? It seems like, if we suffer for doing wrong, at least we are getting what we deserve. But if we suffer for doing right, if we suffer for Christ, then it isn’t deserved. And this in part is why it is better. First it is better because it is no way better to ever do what is wrong. There’s no glory in suffering for wrong; it is justice. But more importantly, when we suffer for what is right, we are demonstrating the unjust and gracious suffering of Christ as we follow His example.

We may suffer for Christ, but if we do, we must remember that Christ suffered for us as well. He died for us, once for all, meaning that when we suffer, we are not bearing a penalty for our sins; Christ has borne it for us. And it was unjust suffering, the just for the unjust. He did not deserve such a horrific death, but it was for our sin, our evil, that He died. And it resulted in bringing us to God through faith in Him. He was innocent in His suffering, but He endured it because of His confidence that the Father was accomplishing His will, bringing salvation to us.

So, when we suffer for Him, we must not think it unusual that God would use something like this to accomplish His purposes. If Christ endured unjust suffering, then we can expect to as well. And also, we must remember that we are blessed, just as those early Christians in Acts 5 were, for being counted worthy to follow in His steps of suffering. And though our suffering does not bear sin for ourselves and others, it may be the result of others’ sins, and it may be the witness God will use to bring about their salvation that was accomplished in Christ’s sufferings. Our suffering becomes a visible “gospel in miniature” that may open their eyes to the glory of the gospel in full. What a privilege, that God would use the brief and momentary suffering that we may face in Christ’s name, to show someone the greater reality of Christ’s suffering and death for them!

And so, for these and perhaps other reasons, we can concur that if we suffer for Christ, for the sake of righteousness, we are indeed blessed. We may never experience it, but if we do, it will be under God’s perfect will. Our lives are purged of worthless idols; we are given opportunities for witness; we demonstrate the genuineness of our faith; and we follow in Christ’s footsteps. We may pray that it will never be, but if God should will it, we will endure it, we trust, in His power, knowing that we are blessed as we do.