Listen or read the following transcript as D. A. Carson speaks from 1 Peter 1:1–12 in this address from The Gospel Coalition Sermon Library
Consider Ian’s mother. Ian was my age, a boy of 10 in my class at school. We were friends, possibly because we were both nerds, eggheads. Then Ian fell ill with cancer. Eventually, he dropped out of school. I used to go to his home and watch him as he shriveled up. Then his body began to distend from the mysterious combination of disease and drugs. Ian’s mother was a fine woman, a religious person. She used to sing on a local radio station that produced a kind of interfaith religious service. When Ian was deathly ill, she sang on the radio a song about hope.
Soft as the voice of an angel,
Breathing a lesson unheard.
Hope with a gentle persuasion
Whispers her comforting word.
Wait till the darkness is over,
Wait till the tempest is done.
Hope for the sunshine tomorrow
After the shower is gone.
Whispering hope, oh how welcome thy voice,
Making my heart in its sorrow rejoice.
She was a courageous woman, clinging to hope, but Ian died.
Consider the brutalizing conditions of the worst concentration camps, the worst gulags, the most inhumane maximum security prisons. One of the worst cruelties they can impose is the destruction of hope. If you know you are never going to get out, precisely where does your hope reside or is it destroyed?
Those who retain some sort of hope in such brutal conditions often manage to retain some sort of dignity. Perhaps it’s hope of an early release, after all, hope of a pardon. Maybe it becomes religious, a hope of eternal life, but those who lose all hope themselves often degenerate to become brutal beings or, finally, suicidal.
Viktor Frankl, the Austrian psychiatrist who was himself incarcerated for a large part of World War II in one of the Nazi camps, wrote afterwards, “The prisoner who had lost faith in his future was doomed. With his loss of belief in the future he also lost his spiritual hold. He let himself decline and became subject to mental and physical decay. Usually this happened quite suddenly in the form of a crisis, the symptoms of which were familiar to the experienced camp inmate.
Usually it began with the prisoner refusing one morning to get dressed and work or to go out onto the parade grounds. No entreaties, no blows, no threats had any effect. He just lay there, hardly moving. If this crisis was brought about by an illness, he refused to be taken to the sick bay or to do anything to help himself. He simply gave up. There he remained lying in his own excrete and nothing bothered him anymore.”
Consider the role of hope in a broad sweep of human experience: the little tad going off to Mother-Toddler or to Reception class looking forward to seeing Johnny, the hope of a teenager being accepted in a circle of friends, the hope of achieving certain grades or a certain position, the hope that your complexion will clear up.
Eventually, it’s the hope that you, too, will be married; the hope that your first child will be, more or less, normal, considering who the parents are; the hope that you’ll be promoted at work; the hope that the income will be adequate to meet the mortgage; the hope that your children won’t do all the stupid things you did when you were that age; and the hope for the well-being of your first grandchild. Hope. Hope. Hope.
For human beings, hope is something necessary for well-being. What happens when hopes die? For most of us, when specific hopes die, other hopes replace them eventually, but suppose there is no hope. When someone really is giving up, we say, “They have lost all hope,” and they roll over and die.
Hope looks into the future. It gives a reason for living. It makes actions and choices significant. It adds zest and focus. It provides a moral compass. This is true even when the hope is not realized, for as long as this forward-looking anticipation exists there seems to be a reason for living even when that reason does not, finally, prove to be well-founded.
Hell is where there is no more hope. Dante’s picture is exactly right. “Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.” But the New Testament habitually speaks of hope in a slightly different sense. What I’ve just described is how we use hope. It, too, includes the element of forward-looking anticipation. As Paul puts it, we do not hope for what has already arrived, for in that case, we have already received it. We hope for that which has not yet come to pass.
When we today speak of hope, we automatically include the possibility of frustration. “When are you leaving?” “Oh, this afternoon at 5:00. That’s when I hope to leave.” Even by wording it that way, you mean in contemporary English that you may not make it. It may take a little longer to pack your bags or your car may not start or the taxi may not show up on time or the plane may be delayed or who knows what?
Hope in the Bible embraces this forward-looking anticipation intrinsic to all hope without hinting at any implied suspicions that the whole thing might come crashing down and that I might be frustrated. There are two important implications of this.
First, the Bible can speak of our certain hope. In modern English, that’s almost a contradiction in terms. Hope is not certain, but in the Bible, hope is forward-looking, and whether it is certain or not depends on the ground of the promise, and if it’s God’s promise, it’s certain. The New Testament writers can speak of a certain hope. “We have a hope that is steadfast and certain,” we sang. “Gone through the curtain and touching the throne.”
In the second place, in this framework, Christian hope, then, becomes a great virtue. Indeed, one of the three cardinal Christian virtues: faith, hope, and love. Those three. First Peter says a great deal about Christian hope, but before plunging forward we must ask ourselves … To whom does Peter address his exposition of hope? What are the first readers of this letter like?
Peter addresses them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. He writes, “To God’s elect, strangers in the world scattered throughout the provinces of Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia and Bithynia, who have been chosen according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, through the sanctifying work of the Spirit, for obedience to Jesus Christ and sprinkling by his blood …”
No doubt, the full-orbed doctrine of the Trinity was not entirely formulated, but these Trinitarian styles of referring to Father, Son, and Spirit are not uncommon in the New Testament. These are the people who, according to verse 1:18, “… formerly followed an empty way of life handed down to you from your forefathers.”
They were pagans, but now we are told they have been chosen according to the foreknowledge of God the Father. Peter applies to them an election category from the Old Testament. This Peter who was once shocked to be told by God himself, if you please, in a vision that he should be not only permitted but mandated to eat non-kosher food … “Rise, Peter. Kill and eat.”
“No, not me, God. No unclean food has ever touched my lips.” Three times. Now he understands the locus of God’s redeemed community is anchored in God’s foreknowing election in eternity past as surely as were his own ancient people, the Jews. These Gentile Christians are not second-class citizens of the kingdom. They were known by God from the beginning.
This expression, who have been chosen according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, does not mean he chose them according to what he foreknew they would do; he foreknew them, to use Paul’s language. He foreloved them, and he chose them as surely as he had chosen ancient Israel. We sometimes sing these things better than we say them in more prosaic forms.
I sought the Lord, and afterward I knew
he moved my soul to seek him, seeking me.
It was not I that found, O Savior true;
no, I was found of thee.
Thou didst reach forth thy hand and mine enfold;
I walked and sank not on the storm-vexed sea.
‘Twas not so much that I on thee took hold,
as thou, dear Lord, on me.
I find, I walk, I love, but oh, the whole
of love is but my answer, Lord, to thee!
For thou wert long beforehand with my soul;
always thou lovedst me.
That is what Peter says here. “Always, you foreknew them. You loved them and chose them.” Then in verse 2, again, he mentions the Holy Spirit. “They have been chosen according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, through the sanctifying work of the Spirit.” That is a theme we’ll pick up a little more later.
This sanctifying work does not, I think, in the context have to do with God making them progressively more holy. Rather, they have been made holy by the Spirit’s work in making them God’s. They belong to God. They are God’s. Thus, they are set aside for God, for God’s use. They are holy. In principle, they are holy, sanctified already by the work of the Spirit. We will return to that in a later session.
This, “for obedience to Jesus Christ and sprinkling by his blood …” The obedience here is the initial obedience bound up with our initial repentance, our initial submission to Jesus Christ as Lord as in verse 22. “Now that you have purified yourselves by obeying the truth so that you have sincere love for your brothers …” Obeying the truth of the gospel, you have come to terms with the gospel.
These people have been sanctified by the Spirit in the sense that they have been set aside for God for obedience to Jesus Christ and sprinkling by his blood. The sprinkling symbolism is almost certainly drawn from Exodus 24. The mountains shook. The people were assembled to enter into a covenant with God.
An altar with 12 pillars representing the 12 tribes, the wholeness of the covenant community, was constructed and sacrifice was offered. Half of the blood was sprinkled on the altar. Then Moses read the words of God’s covenant. The people pledged obedience. Then Moses sprinkled the rest of the blood on the people saying, “This is the blood of the covenant that the Lord has made with you in accordance with all these words.” (Exodus 24:8)
Now Peter speaks of these Gentiles becoming obedient to Christ through the new covenant in Christ’s blood. We are sprinkled, too, not with an ox’s blood but with the blood of Jesus Christ. We have been cleansed by a sacrifice far superior to any sacrifice offered up of sheep or goat or bull. Peter addresses them, first of all, in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
Then he addresses them as Christians who still live in the world, and that world can be a hard place. He writes, “To God’s elect, strangers in the world …” Aliens, if you like. “… scattered throughout the provinces of Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia and Bithynia …” Regions of modern-day Turkey. Strangers. Aliens. Scattered. The word rendered scattered is the word that is often mentioned in other literature, the Diaspora. The scattering of the Jews from the time of the exile on.
First under the Assyrians, the northern tribes were taken away. At least their leaders and many of their middle-class people were taken away. The final tribes were removed by the Babylonians in 587 BC. These Jews scattered around the empire were referred to collectively as the Diaspora, the scattered ones. In some ways, the Jews themselves saw this as a mark of shame and longed for the time when the Messiah would bring them back together again.
Now Peter is saying, in effect, the real Diaspora, the real scattered ones finally, are Messiah’s people, and he does not see this quite so much as a badge of shame as almost a badge of honor, for they are a Diaspora in a world that does not know God. There’s a kind of confrontation. They are aliens.
I married an English woman, and when she moved back to Canada with me, she became a landed immigrant. It sounds a bit like a beached whale in some ways. Then we moved down to the United States, and we both became resident aliens. We’re still resident aliens, which is a polite way the Americans have of saying, “You don’t fit. You don’t quite belong. You’re not citizens.”
That’s what Peter says with respect to these Christians. They are strangers in the world. They are the true Diaspora. In this case, scattered in what we call Turkey. Of course, that fits into a broad stream of what the Bible says, does it not? Jesus warns in John 14 and following that Christians discover this world is not their home. They’re just a-passing through, as the ancient Negro spiritual puts it.
Hebrews says, with respect to Jesus, “The high priest carries the blood of animals into the Most Holy Place as a sin offering, so Jesus also suffered outside the city gate to make the people holy through his own blood. Let us, then, go to him outside the camp, bearing the disgrace he bore. For here we do not have an enduring city, but we are looking for the city that is to come.”
There is a sense in which Christians remain in a perennial tension. We may be citizens of Great Britain or some other country, but it’s not our ultimate citizenship. In some ways we just don’t fit, and the want of fit is much more severe in some countries than in others. We’ll come to that in due course. Peter addresses them as Christians who still live in this world, but that world can be a hard place.
Then Peter addresses them, too, with a traditional Christian blessing. “Grace and peace be yours in abundance.” Grace, someone has said, is God’s love in action in Jesus Christ on behalf of sinners. His peace is his shalom, his well-being as human beings are reconciled to him with all that means, both for this world and the world to come. “Let this be yours in abundance,” he says.
Then Peter, in addressing these believers, does so as a Christian apostle enmeshed in the life of the church, a church that understands its alien status in the world. Not only does he call himself an apostle, but at the very end of this letter in chapter 5, verses 12 and following, he says, “With the help of Silas, whom I regard as a faithful brother, I have written to you briefly.”
Most, if not all, of the New Testament letters were written by dictation, and there was a scribe, an amanuensis. In this case, Silas was the scribe. “I have written to you briefly, encouraging you and testifying that this is the true grace of God. Stand fast in it.” Then, returning to this theme of being an alien, “She who is in Babylon, chosen together with you …”
That is almost certainly Peter’s way of referring to the church in Rome. The church (she) who is in Babylon, a coded New Testament way of referring to ancient Rome. At this point, the historical Babylon was a non-entity. It was a scrappy little village without political significance, but Babylon in the Old Testament had become such a symbol for all that stood against God, all of its neo-pagan love of self, that it becomes almost a stereotype of a world that does not know God.
That shows up in other New Testament books, not least the book of Revelation, the last book of the New Testament where Babylon regularly stands for Rome. Over against Babylon (this vile city) is the New Jerusalem. Then this ancient Babylon, now reincarnate in Rome, is like a prostitute. Whereas, the New Jerusalem, the people of God, is like a bride prepared for her groom. As a result, some have suggested you can re-title the book of Revelation A Tale of Two Cities with a subtitle The Harlot and the Bride. That’s the kind of framework out of which Peter is speaking here.
“She who is in Babylon …” The church who is right at the center of the empire and the center of a great deal of idolatry in paganism. “… chosen together with you, sends you her greetings, and so does my son Mark.” That’s John Mark. Peter almost certainly stands behind Mark as apostolic witness to the events of Jesus’ life. “Greet one another with a kiss of love.” What Paul would call a holy kiss. “Peace to all of you who are in Christ.”
This kiss of love, of course, is part of Christian fellowship. How that is exemplified in different cultures will vary. Do I need to say more on that front? I was brought up in French Canada. I’m reasonably used to kissing on both cheeks, but I have been in enough corners of the world where there are certain cheeks you don’t do that to.
I quite sympathize with J.B. Phillips’ rendering of the famous Pauline passage, “Give a hearty handshake all around,” which is distinctly more British, you have to admit. On the other hand, there are these cultural sensitivities. I might walk down the street of Keswick hand in hand with my wife and I don’t think I would be thought terribly immoral to do so.
But if I were on the streets of Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, then I would not do that. She might find herself walking respectfully two or three paces behind me. The only people who walk down the street hand in hand are men, and that has nothing like the significance it has in San Francisco. There are these different ways of symbolizing things.
What is meant by this (don’t get caught up in the necessity for peculiar symbolism) is the kind of intimacy and Christian fellowship and acceptance of brothers and sisters in Christ that is warm-hearted and without reserve. This, then, is the context in which Peter develops the theme of hope, and he speaks now in these verses of hope in four dimensions.
1. The hope that God establishes.
Verse 3: “Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead …” The form of this praise (“Praise be to God” or “Praise be to the Lord”) is common in a lot of ancient Jewish liturgy.
For instance, in the famous Eighteen Benedictions or Eighteen Blessings, which may well stretch back to Peter’s day, we read one of them along these lines. There are some lines of preparation for the blessing, then the blessing itself. “Speedily cause the offspring of David thy servant to flourish and let his horn …”
Horn in this sort of symbolism means kingship or king dominion or kingly rule. “… and let his horn be exalted by thy salvation because we wait for thy salvation all the day.” Then the blessing: “Blessed are thou, O Lord, who causes the horn of salvation to flourish.” It’s the same form as here. “Blessed be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.”
Do you hear the plaintive and poignant longing in this ancient Jewish blessing? Very different in tone from the Christian one. “Cause the offspring of David to flourish. Let his horn be exalted by thy salvation. Blessed are thou, O Lord, who causes the horn of salvation to flourish.” This ancient liturgy is still looking forward to the coming of Messiah; the Christian liturgy and this Christian blessing insist the Messiah has come.
Here, indeed, in his great mercy, God has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Messiah from the dead. This hope is as surely based on the sheer facticity of Jesus’ resurrection as can possibly be imagined. Our hope is as sure as Jesus’ resurrection from the dead.
It is not something we hope for in the modern sense, but it might not come off. It is an anticipating eagerness that looks forward to something still to be unpacked a little more grounded in Jesus’ resurrection. Of course, even at the existential level of Peter’s own experience, this hope proved life-transforming, did it not? When Jesus died on the cross, where was Peter existentially, emotionally?
From Caesarea Philippi on, Jesus had spoken of his death and resurrection, but Peter, like the others, did not really have a category for a crucified Messiah. Messiahs don’t die. Messiahs win. Messiahs are triumphant. But Jesus spoke of his impending death, and because he didn’t have a category along those lines, Peter was quite prepared to rebuke Jesus theologically on that score.
Then according to Paul, in Acts 15, in a private revelation of the resurrected Jesus to Peter before Jesus met with the Twelve (the Eleven), hope sparked into life. There was the restoration to service described in John 21. “Peter, do you love me? Do you love me more than these?” Yet, there were more massive dimensions to this hope.
By this point, Peter has the implications of this together. He knows with the death and resurrection of Jesus there is God’s final provision for the forgiveness of sins. With Jesus resurrected, the promised messianic kingdom was dawning. Here there was eternal life experienced now even if not consummated till the end. With Jesus’ resurrection, there was every hope of ourselves one day gaining resurrection bodies like Jesus’ resurrection body.
In fact, in due course, Jesus’ return came to be referred to as the blessed hope of the church. Explicitly, we participate in all of this now in some measure by means of the new birth. “Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead …” This is the hope that God establishes.
2. The hope that God sustains.
Verses 4 and 5. Note carefully the parallelism between verse 3 and verses 4 and 5. Let me read them together but with suitable emphasis. “Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead and into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade.” Kept in heaven for you. Do you see the point?
There is a parallel between new birth into a living hope and new birth into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil, or fade. “This inheritance is kept in heaven for you, who through faith are shielded by God’s power until the coming of the salvation that is ready to be revealed in the last time.”
We must unpack a little what the apostle means by this. Doubtless, Peter recalled Jesus’ teaching about treasure laid up in heaven. We find it, for instance, in Matthew 6 in the Sermon on the Mount. “Do not lay up treasures on earth, where moth and rust corrode, and where thieves break through and steal. But lay up treasures for yourself in heaven, where moth and rust do not corrode, and where thieves do not break through and steal.”
Yet, here the focus is not quite on treasure so much as on inheritance. I think Peter and his readers have an Old Testament background quite clearly in mind. The Old Testament background pictures the Israelites’ inheritance, first and foremost, to be the land, the land given not only to the Israelites as a whole but parceled out to each clan, each extended family with lasting rights of ownership, at least on paper.
The Old Testament people of God were aliens and pilgrims until they entered the Promised Land and received their inheritance. Abraham was just a stranger. Then the people were slaves in Egypt. Then they were in the wilderness for years and years. Strangers. Pilgrims waiting to get their inheritance, the inheritance of the Promised Land.
This does not mean, of course, they were utterly destitute, for there was a sense in which, although they were not yet in the land, the promise had been given them. The land was, in principle, theirs. It was, therefore, the Promised Land. They looked forward to it with hope, and in due course, God brought about the accomplishment of that hope, and they entered into their inheritance.
All of Peter’s description of our inheritance emerges from this God-ordained Old Testament model. We, too, are aliens and pilgrims. That’s part of the perennial tension that thoughtful, obedient Christians will always face, but this does not mean we are paupers waiting for an inheritance that is in no sense ours. We are enriched by the certainty of the promise and, as we shall see, Peter insists some part of it has already come to us. We have a clear title to the inheritance God has reserved for us and also a down payment of it, as we shall see in a moment.
Moreover, our inheritance, too, can never perish, spoil, or fade. The words that are used there are used in various Old Testament descriptions in the Greek Old Testament to describe things that happened to the land at one point or another. The land itself doesn’t perish, after all. Sometimes the people are run out of it or marauding troops come in, sometimes the people are punished, but the land is still there. It doesn’t perish.
For us, finally, the whole universe, according to 2 Peter, burns up with a fierce heat such that even the elements are devoured, but our inheritance doesn’t burn up. No. It doesn’t perish. It’s reserved in heaven for us. We look for a new heaven and a new earth, the home of righteousness. It doesn’t spoil. It’s not defiled. In the ancient-Israel conception of things, the land could be defiled, spoiled, polluted by the sins of the people, but the new heaven and the new earth has no sin in it. It is never spoiled. It is never defiled. There is no sin there.
In these Petrine epistles, we read of the new heaven and the new earth, the home of righteousness. Isn’t that a lovely phrase? There will not be a single shred of bitterness there, no hate, no arrogance, no greed, no lust, no envy, no jealousy, no murder. There will be no harsh tongues. There will be no nasty resentments. No. Nothing to spoil, to defile, to corrode our inheritance.
The ancient land could, in one sense, fade by drought and the like. It could be parched. Its fruitfulness could fade as in the days of the drought imposed by God himself under the ministry of Elijah, but our inheritance is salvation consummated in the new heaven and the new earth where there will never, ever be any sort of drought again.
Moreover, this inheritance is kept in heaven for us and we are kept for it. Do you hear the language? “In his great mercy, God has given us new birth into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil, or fade, kept in heaven for you.” God keeps your inheritance for you. That is why Christian hope can be certain.
At the same time, the you who are here mentioned in verse 4 are described in verse 5. You, “who through faith are shielded by God’s power until the coming of the salvation that is ready to be revealed in the last time.” While God keeps the inheritance for us, he keeps us for the inheritance, shielded by God’s power.
Otherwise, the inheritance could be nicely parked up there while we wander off in rebellion and are damned, but no. God keeps his own people by his power, preserving us as he preserves the inheritance for us. Then, as we hope for (we eagerly anticipate) our inheritance, we are shielded by God’s power through faith.
This is God’s means of keeping us (verse 5) as it is God’s means of saving us. This faith and this hope are both grounded in God. Hence, we read verse 21, “Through him you believe in God, who raised him from the dead and glorified him, and so your faith and hope are in God.” Here, then, is hope that God sustains.
3. The hope that God introduces.
Verses 6 to 9. We might like to imagine the hopeful person is the optimist, the person who lives above the hassles of the world in the perennial pleasure of watching things get better and, therefore, living in hope, but Peter places hope in these verses in the context of suffering. He says in verse 6, “In all this …” In the prospect of Christ’s return.
“… you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials. These have come so that your faith—of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire—may be proved genuine and may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed. Though you have not seen him, you love him; and even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and are filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy, for you are receiving the goal of your faith, the salvation of your souls.”
Peter’s analysis of the situation says hope, as it were, has only been introduced. God has introduced it to us. We are now receiving the goal of our faith, the salvation of our souls. Yet, we have not seen Jesus Christ. Doubtless, we love him, but we have not yet seen him. Moreover, we still live in this context of verse 6 with trials and sorrows and opposition.
Indeed, in these verses, Peter provides several reasons why Christians actually rejoice in this hope God has introduced to them even though they find themselves facing grief and trials of various kinds. Isn’t that what verse 6 says? “In all this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials.” What kind of attitude is that? What are these reasons for such rejoicing in hope?
A. It is intrinsic.
The suffering is temporary. It is transient. It is a little while, we read. “… though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials.” Over against the fruitfulness and inheritance of an eternity with God. Small wonder Paul, then, in 2 Corinthians 4, after many brutal experiences both imposed by the world and by churches that got a little astray, he can speak of his “light and momentary afflictions which cannot be compared with the eternal weight of glory.”
Let me tell you frankly, that’s not how I’m inclined to see things when I’m going through it. My entire horizons can be consumed by some small aggravation. Anyone who has been in the ministry for any period of time knows full well sooner or later you get kicked in the teeth, and when you’re going through that, too, you can be seduced into thinking this so devours your horizons that it is difficult to imagine any reward compensating for it, but that’s not the way Peter saw it. It’s not the way Paul saw it. No. These light and momentary afflictions Paul writes of, this little while Peter writes of cannot be compared with the eternal weight of glory.
B. The tension between present pressures and the ultimate glory to come is precisely what strengthens our faith.
If, as a Christian, everything always went perfectly well for you … Before, when you were a blackguard in the community, you really had a rough time, but once you became a Christian, everything was just smooth sailing from there. How would that increase your faith in this broken, self-centered world?
But Peter knows the tension between the glory to come and the present pressures produces endurance. It demonstrates our faith is genuine, and it deepens that faith. Hence, we read, verse 7: “These have come so that your faith—of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire—may be proved genuine and may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed.”
That’s a fairly common theme in a lot of New Testament writings. In James 1:2, for example, we read, “Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds …” Did you hear that? That’s what the text says, and it does not mean we’re masochists. “Oh, boy. This is a good one, Lord. Hit me again!” It doesn’t mean that.
It tells us, rather, why we should rejoice. “Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance. Perseverance must finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.”
One of the reasons why Christians will rejoice when we face temptations is because we have absorbed the theological point that with God in charge what this is really designed to do is to make us become enduring. Just as the endurance an athlete pushes himself toward produces endurance as a whole characteristic of his very being, so also with trials in the Christian life and Christians prize that as an athlete prizes endurance.
But it’s not just strengthening and maturity and maturation and endurance in this life, there’s something more. Verse 12: “Blessed is the man who perseveres under trial because, when he has stood the test, he will receive the crown of life that God has promised to those who love him.” In other words, Christians do not have the same sort of values as a secular world that knows nothing of the rewards of heaven.
We can look at trials in a different way precisely because we have this Christian hope. If we do not maintain that hope before our eyes, it will be very, very difficult indeed to manage the trials that most of us will face in some form or another and some in great severity. These are reasons for rejoicing.
C. The rewards are spectacular and actually begin now.
According to verse 7, our faith is proved genuine under trial and results in praise, glory, and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed. We have to ask, “Is this praise, glory, and honor for us or for God?” Commentators divide over it. You can make sense of the text either way.
On the one hand, you want to say Peter in his writings constantly says the ultimate praise goes to God or to Jesus. For example, in chapter 4, verse 11, he writes, “If anyone speaks, he should it as one speaking the very words of God. If anyone serves, he should do it with the strength God provides, so that in all things God may be praised through Jesus Christ. To him be the glory and the power for ever and ever.”
Again, in chapter 2, verse 9: “But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light.” Yet, on the other hand, we receive a crown of glory at the end, according to chapter 5, verse 4. Grace is given us when Jesus Christ is revealed in chapter 1, verse 13.
The two, of course, are bound together. Any glory we receive at the end is still a sharing of Christ’s glory. Thus, the thought of all praise being directed to God at the end is essential to this passage, and we Christians already delight, therefore, to see whatever praise and honor and glory come to God through Jesus Christ now, even in our sufferings. Hasn’t that been the experience of many Christians?
More importantly, all this takes place, at the end of verse 7, when Jesus Christ is revealed at his second coming. We Christians are related to him already. Hence, verses 8 and 9. “Though you have not seen him, you love him; and even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and are even now filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy.”
When Peter wrote this he must have had some strange thoughts going through his head because unlike most or all of his readers he had seen Jesus. He had seen Jesus from the beginning of Jesus’ ministry. He had been called by Jesus personally. He had spent perhaps two and a half years or so following Jesus literally around the countryside. He had seen Jesus perform astonishing miracles. He had been one of his inner three. He had seen Jesus transfigured on the mountain. Oh, he had seen Jesus.
He had been through the emotional depths as he saw Jesus hang on the cross. He had been exalted heavenward as he had seen Jesus resurrected. Oh, he had seen Jesus, but he writes to people like you and me who have never seen Jesus. We have not seen Jesus, we do not see Jesus, but we will see Jesus.
“By faith,” Peter says, “you love him as much as I do.” We are in a relationship with him, we have so been saved by him, the new birth has been given to us, the Holy Spirit has come upon us because all of God’s designed work in sending Jesus to sprinkle his blood upon us and clean us up that already we love him. We do not see him now, but we believe in him, and we are filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy.
Why? For we are receiving the goal of our faith, the salvation of our souls. This, then, is the nature of the hope God introduces to us now as we walk by faith waiting for the final revelation of Jesus Christ. Do you hear the intertwining of Christian faith and hope in these verses? Do you hear it? It has been put this way:
Living by faith in the Lord Jesus Christ,
Walking by faith when our eyes cannot see,
Willing to suffer in all kinds of trials,
God’s power shields us till glory’s revealed.
Nothing reduces or sullies such trust.
Far, far more precious than silver or gold,
Faith when refined grows more focus, robust.
We are forgiven and this is faith’s goal;
Faith is the means by which grace saves our souls.
Lord Jesus, you’re still hidden;
We cannot see your face.
Yet, still by faith, we love you,
For we have known your grace.
Our faith awaits hope’s promise still inaccessible;
Our joy is full and glorious and inexpressible.
Living in hope through the Lord Jesus Christ,
Gently instilled when he gave us new birth,
We’ve been redeemed at a measureless price.
Christ’s precious blood brought God’s hope to the earth.
This choice inheritance never conveyed,
Priceless reserve for us already paid.
Christ’s resurrection is death mortified;
Our hope is anchored in Yahweh most high.
Lord Jesus, you’re still hidden;
We cannot see your face.
Yet, still by faith, we love you,
For we have known your grace.
Our faith awaits hope’s promise still inaccessible;
Our joy is full and glorious and inexpressible.
4. The hope that God designs.
Verses 10 to 12. Peter does not want us to think this wonderful salvation was some last-minute quick fix or the like. It was not only in the mind of God, but in its broad outline it had been predicted by God through the Old Testament prophets. Note three elements of their predictions. They themselves did not always grasp very clearly the facts or the time of the remarkable sequence.
First, the sufferings of the Messiah followed by the glories that would follow. Listen to verses 10 and 11. “Concerning this salvation …” That is, the salvation of our souls mentioned in verse 9. “Concerning this salvation, the prophets, who spoke of the grace that was to come to you, searched intently and with the greatest care, trying to find out the time and circumstances [what was going on] to which the Spirit of Christ in them was pointing when he predicted the sufferings of Christ and the glories that would follow.”
What was it they were trying to sort out? The facts and the timing to which the Spirit of Christ already antecedent with them was pointing when he predicted the sufferings of Christ and the glories that would follow. Of course, from our perspective as Christians, we can see something of that pattern, but it is not entirely clear how many first-century followers of Jesus before the cross and resurrection caught it. Peter didn’t. The disciples didn’t. “Get behind me, Satan. You do not understand the things of God,” Jesus rebukes him.
Today, we look at a passage like Isaiah 53, and we’re very certain the ultimate referent there is to Jesus Christ himself. “Wounded for our transgressions, bruised for our iniquities. The chastisement of our peace was upon him and with his stripes we are healed.” We look to that sacrificial system in which morning and evening a peace offering is made in the tabernacle and in the temple.
We look at Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, when the blood of a goat and the blood of a bull is taken into the Most Holy Place and offered up before God, both for the sins of the priest and for the sins of the people, but how many of the Old Testament writers understood that God would visit us in this spectacular way in which there would first be suffering, shame, pain, and the cross followed by vindication, glory, triumph, and life?
They could see some elements, but they didn’t all have it together. They wanted to. They searched intently and with the greatest care, we’re told. What are the implications? The Christians see these things because we live this side of their fulfillment in one who is simultaneously God and man, in one who is simultaneously suffering servant and triumphant King, in one who was simultaneously the sacrificial lamb and the triumphant, promised Messiah.
The entailment, of course, is that if we go through sufferings on the way to glory, it is the way the Master went. Why should we think that we would be exempt? Our suffering is not a sign that Christ is not ruling or that he has goofed or that, perhaps, we’ve been abandoned. Rather, it is a sign of our allegiance to Jesus, of our alignment with Jesus, of our fellowship with Jesus, a sign of the glory to follow. This is the way God has designed our hope.
How privileged, then, we are, for there has arisen a Redeemer for fallen human beings and not for fallen angels. The angels of heaven long to peer into these things. Verse 12: “Even angels long to look into these things.” Doubtless, in awe of so audacious and gracious a plan of redemption for rebels as this that God has thought up in eternity past and then executed for us by sending his Son to redeem us.
Here it is, then: hope that God establishes, hope that God sustains, hope that God introduces, and hope that God designs. Brothers and sisters, walk by faith, live in hope. Hope not for an easy set of outcomes in this life but hope for eternity, hope anchored in Jesus Christ whom we have not seen yet love, and even though we do not see him now, we believe in him and are filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy, for we are receiving the goal of our faith, the salvation of our souls. Let us pray.
Lord God, in a world so enamored of immediate outcomes, help us to live with eternity’s values in view. In a world so enamored of physical and material comfort and public success, help us to remember the way the Master went, odium and death on a cross and vindication. In a world that is so attached to all that is transient, help us to live hungry above all for the glory of God, for the praise of his Son.
In a world that is so attached to self, grant that our love for Christ may increase more and more so that we sing with Christians in every age:
Face to face with Christ, my Savior,
Face to face—what will it be,
When with rapture I behold Him,
Jesus Christ who died for me?
Only faintly now I see Him,
With the darkling veil between,
But a blessed day is coming,
When his glory shall be seen.
So we, too, cry with the church in every generation, “Even so, come, Lord Jesus.” Amen.
