I greatly appreciated the text for the sermon this past week which was 1 Peter 4 as well as the sermon Pastor D preached on it. In light of the text and its continuation in chapter 5 I have some thoughts.
The text of both chapters primarily address two facets of suffering as believers would experience it…as individuals and as the inter-woven community of Christ. Peter is writing to a church community that is increasingly having to bear up under the oppression of a world growing in hostility to the gospel. The question naturally arises within the community "what point is belief in this suffering Christ if my life gets worse and not better in terms of worldly suffering?" Peter points out that the suffering of the believer and the community of believers must be borne as witness (martys/martus) to the suffering Christ.
As Peter writes these words on the suffering church he does so with his eyesfixed firmly on Proverbs. There are several references to the Proverbs within the text of 1 Peter 4 & 5. When we look to Proverbs we learn that it is instruction of the ways of righteousness compared to the ways of evil. The writer of Proverbs (writing to his son) does not hold himself in high esteem as one who is in fact the righteous person he describes but rather he is the very fallen broken one he warns his son about and against. He writes to his son as one who has already embarked upon the path of unrighteousness. The purpose of Proverbs is not then to console the righteous but rather to warn the unrighteous. Righteousness before God in Proverbs exists as a warning and an example to the unrighteous. It exists for the other and not for the self (just as Israel exists for the sake of the other nations and not itself – but that is another note).
So we find the same themes in 1 Peter 4 & 5 where, as he writes to the church about the need to bear up under suffering, he does so carrying forth these same themes – that we bear up under the suffering not for ourselves but rather for the sake of Christ and the sake of the world He came to die for.
"but rejoice to the extent that you partake in Christ’s sufferings…" 1 Peter 4:13. Once again we are confronted with the question of why? If we are to believe that Peter is writing with Proverbs in mind for a reason then something in this tells us that our suffering is for the sake of others. Peter’s discourse on suffering echoes the words of Paul in Galatians 2:20 where he writes "I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me."
‘Why again?’ we ask and are reminded of Paul’s words to us in Philippians 2:5-11 where he writes:
"Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus: Who, being in very nature. God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient to death— even death on a cross! Therefore God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father."
Now we have come to the heart of the gospel which is where Peter has been pointing all along and we can in fact ask the real question that needs to be asked which is "why did Christ come and endure suffering?" and not "why do I have to endure suffering?" for in answer the former we will find answer to the less important latter. It is John who helpfully provides the answer in the beautiful poetic way only he can in John 3:16-18:
"For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because he has not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son."
The cross is our answer. We suffer because He suffered first. We endure because He endured first. Why? Love. Christ came not to condemn but to save. So in our suffering we do not condemn but recognize that we continue the saving suffering of the Lord who’s very Spirit lives within us. The Spirit that motivates us so that as Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 9:22 "To the weak I became weak, to win the weak. I have become all things to all people so that by all possible means I might save some."
We suffer because it might be a means toward the rescue of others. When Peter references that suffering is in part due to God’s judgement already unfolding on the church and that if we suffer now as believers how much more shall those outside the church suffer in the end – it is not to encourage us. Peter is not saying "do not worry the unbelievers will get theirs in the end" as though attempting to appeal to some cosmic desire for eye-for-an-eye vengence, rather we must despair so much at the potential suffering of those outside the church that we would be motivated out of Christ’s love to endure suffering and even death for their sake. This again is the heart of the gospel that Peter is preaching to us.
Finally we must remember that if we suffer with Christ we will die with Christ and if we die with Christ we will rise again with Christ. This is our hope, this is the hope of the world and it is the gospel which can, like our suffering, only be borne and proclaimed (kerygma) with a deep Christ-like love for the world we stand before as witnesses – but such hope cannot be arrived at without going through the cross.
"Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life." Romans 6:3-4
Harnessing Chaos 