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TELL THEM THAT!
You know a group (or a family or an individual) that is having a rough ride in life and you know it’ll get worse before it gets better and you purpose to write them a letter. How would you begin it?
There’d be nothing at all wrong in saying something like, “Ah, dear people, we have heard of your pain and loss and we want you to know that our hearts are with your hearts…” Surely there’s always a place for the expression of fellow-feeling and sympathy!
But troubled people need more than sympathy—of course! Where it’s possible we need to get involved in a “hands on” way to alleviate if not completely eradicate their difficulties (doesn’t Matthew 25:34-40 call us to that and more?).
After the meal has been eaten or the warmth of the personal visit is only a memory something must remain with them! The meal and the warmth and the clothes should all be given but there comes a time when the person must carry the burden alone and something must be put into these people that stays when the helpers depart.
Peter writes to people in trouble, people despised and rejected by society, people who are undergoing suffering and will face even more in the days ahead. And how does he open a letter to that kind of people?
In 1:1-3 he tells them who they are!
He tells them they are God’s chosen! He tells them that they are the people made different by the Holy Spirit! He tells them that they are the people covenanted to God by the blood of Jesus Christ (see Exodus 24:1-8). He later tells them that though they are rejected by their peers and despised by them that they are chosen by God and that he sees them as precious (1 Peter 2:4). Then he tells them that however scorned and mistreated they are that they’re God’s holy nation and royal priesthood with a destiny and a commission that beggars description (2:9-10).
Peter doesn’t deny their trouble—far from it! Read the entire short letter in one sitting and see what I mean.
But he opens his letter reminding them who they are! Imagine them sitting in their little assemblies and hearing these words read out to them (1:1-3, and the rest). If they can really believe these almost incredible claims will their lives not be transformed and will they not find joy as they see their trials as part of the suffering of the Lord Jesus? “Will they not be thrilled as they ask themselves, “This is who we are? This is really who we are?”
And how should we speak to our troubled brothers and sisters throughout the world? What should we say to tiny assemblies in far-off places that are suffering for their faith? And to those nearer at hand! Is this not a direction we should go? In wise and caring ways should we not—before we speak of their troubles but never forgetting that they are troubled—should we not tell them who they are?
Tell each other who you are! Unpack the meaning of who they are. Our people don't know who they are.
Get a hands-on involvement in things that can be changed for each other.
Then tell each other again who you are!
Keep on telling one another who you are!
Keep on telling one another WHOSE you are and therefore who you are!
[And while we're at it—tell the happy and blessed who they are!]
[And while we're at it, tell troubled non-Christians what kind of God GOD is. Tell them noble things about God and tell them that he will right all wrongs—the wrongs wrought against them! Help them to believe that what’s happening to them matters to Him and do what you can to help them trust Him. Remind them that Christians aren’t God’s “pets” and that they too hurt but that they have good reason to believe that abuse and tyranny and sadness do not have the last word!]
Peter’s readers were Messianic Jews scattered through the provinces he mentions as he begins his letter. Not only would they be in a real sense alienated from the Gentile world around them, many of them would be regarded with suspicion and worse by leaders in the Jewish communities (compare 1 Peter 2:4-10 where the Christians are viewed as stones in the temple built on the Rejected Stone and see Acts 4:11). These Christians were already suffering in some ways and to some degree and Peter insists that there is more ahead (1 Peter 1:6 and 4:7, 17).
Since God is their Father and they are his chosen they might have expected to have everything going for them (this is a commonplace expectation and it isn’t an unreasonable one). Pain and loss speak their message loud and clear—“You don’t matter; if you mattered you’d be taken care of!” This is part of the reason Peter repeatedly stresses their identity—because their experience calls it into question.
Having assured them of their identity he speaks to them of their inheritance in 1 Peter 1:3-5.
You understand that what members of a good family inherit is not only a series of blessings—being part of a “good” family is the supreme blessing. Still, we mustn’t try to be too precise; while just the privilege of being part of a good family is the root of everything there are blessings that come to a good family that can’t be experienced by those outside it. It would be wrong to seek God only for what he can give us but it would be stupid to think we aren’t allowed to rejoice in the blessings he does give us.
Peter’s troubled readers who were redeemed by the extraordinary (1 Peter 1:18-19) are heirs of the extraordinary. Whatever the inheritance is it cannot be seized by oppressors or plundered by conquerors. It is reserved in a realm beyond tyranny’s reach and in a place where thieves can’t steal it. It isn’t the kind of treasure that moths can eat or rust can destroy (Matthew 6:19-21). Present experience and past history would give all this a special clarity for these Jewish believers but it would say no less to Christians everywhere who live in slums with rapacious gangs and landlords and brutal governments and militia groups on the prowl. That inheritance which is now theirs by virtue of who they are will one day be their actual and personal experience.
In the meantime—and this truth must be a terrible burden for the truly burdened by life—part of what they have inherited as part of the community of Christ is to share the sufferings of Jesus Christ. Note the explanatory words like “for” in passages such as 1 Peter 2:21; you were called to this “for” (because) Christ also suffered for us.
Why should Christians suffer when their inheritance in Jesus Christ is glory, honor and immortality? Because they are part of the body of Christ who has borne our sicknesses and carried our diseases (see Matthew 8:16-17). Christians suffer for the world! They are part of the redeeming presence of Jesus in the world in every generation.
So even their suffering—however difficult it is for truly suffering souls to believe—even their suffering is shot through with glory. 1 Peter 4:12-16. That passage focuses more on the suffering that is persecution but to limit the NT’s view of the sufferings of Christians to nothing more that persecution is a real mistake. To reduce Christ’s suffering to what happened that week is a huge blunder. Lovers are filled with anguish because those they love are suffering, being and abused and misrepresented. Much of the suffering of the world rises out of the love people feel for their beloved ones.
A day will come when those who have embraced Jesus Christ will show the scars they gained as they served him and they’ll glory in them. Note this from Shakespeare’s Henry V about his outnumbered troops gathered against the French at Agincourt:
We would not die in that
man's company
That fears his fellowship to die with us.
This day is called the feast of Crispian:
He that outlives this day, and comes safe home,
Will stand a tip-toe when the day is named,
And rouse him at the name of Crispian.
He that shall live this day, and see old age,
Will yearly on the vigil feast his neighbors,
And say 'To-morrow is Saint Crispian:'
Then will he strip his sleeve and show his scars.
And say 'These wounds I had on Crispin's day.'
Old men forget: yet all shall be forgot,
But he'll remember with advantages
What feats he did that day: then shall our names.
Familiar in his mouth as household words
Harry the king, Bedford and Exeter,
Warwick and Talbot, Salisbury and Gloucester,
Be in their flowing cups freshly remember'd.
This story shall the good man teach his son;
And Crispin Crispian shall ne'er go by,
From this day to the ending of the world,
But we in it shall be remember'd;
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers
This too is part of the inheritance of Christians. This too is part of what we should say to the truly troubled.
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